
Class J j /\ 7^3 I 
Book • n5 8 



MY BELIEF 



MY BELIEF 

ANSWERS TO CERTAIN RELIGIOUS 
DIFFICULTIES 



BY 

ROBERT F. HORTON, M.A., D.D, 

It 

FORMERLY FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD 



FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 

NEW YORK: CHICAGO: TORONTO 
1908 






01 



-N 5 

; 'I s 

30 



PREFACE 

I could never bring myself to any admiration of the 
schoolman's famous formula, Credo quia tmpossibile. 
Nor does even Principal Forsyth's defence of it quite con- 
vince me. When I ask for truth, I resent an epigram 
or a paradox. Even as a boy I imbibed the spirit of 
Olrig Grange, and separated myself from those who say : 

" Credo, that is the door of heaven, 

The more impossible, so much more 
Virtue lies in the credo given 
To open the everlasting door." 

For my own part I believe only what seems to me 
certain. I do not believe it because it is impossible, 
but because it is impossible, with all the evidence before 
me, to disbelieve it. 

There are mysteries which transcend language and 
defy reasoned description, but these I believe, only 
because arguments, which do not transcend language 
or defy reason, shut one up to them. I believe them 
as mysteries; the steps which lead up to them I 
believe as strong and irrefragable arguments. 

By faith, therefore, I mean always a mode of know- 
ledge which alone avails in dealing with the ultimate 
realities of God, the World, and the Soul. 

ROBERT F. HORTON. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE DIFFICULTIES STATED g 

II. IS RELIGION NECESSARY? 32 

III. IS CHRISTIANITY THE BEST RELIGION ? . . 54 

IV. THE CLAIMS OF ROME 77 

V. UNITARIANISM go 

VI. CAN WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE? II3 

VII. IS THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IDENTICAL WITH BELIEF 

IN MIRACLES ? 133 

VIII. THE CHANGED UNIVERSE 152 

IX. HOW TO REGARD PRAYER 171 

X. THE AFTER LIFE igo 

XI. THE DIFFICULTY ARISING FROM THE VARIETY OF 

RELIGIOUS OPINIONS 206 

XII. THE ABSENCE OF A CERTAIN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 2l8 

XIII. THE SOCIAL ANARCHY 232 

XIV. THE RETURN TO PAGANISM . . . . . 247 
XV. THE OLD PROBLEM OF SUFFERING AND SIN . . 260 

XVI. ATONEMENT 276 



THE DIFFICULTIES STATED 

I propose to deal with fifteen of the questions which 
confront the modern mind in the search for religious 
truth. In comparison with times gone by, and even 
with times which many of us remember, the questions 
of to-day are more radical, and wider in their range. 
No postulates are now granted ; no axioms are unas- 
sailed. The field in which the seeds of doubt are sown 
is broad, almost co-extensive with experience. There 
is need therefore of breadth in the treatment of the 
problems ; the wider questions must be answered before 
we descend to the details. This aspect of our time is 
not always appreciated in the lines of defence which 
are adopted by our religious teachers. The apologist 
meets a secondary question triumphantly, but does not 
realise that in the mind of the enquirer there is a 
previous, a more radical, question, which remains un- 
answered, in consequence of which the triumphant 
solution of the minor point is received with coolness 
and languid indifference. 

How incredible it seems that a century ago our 
fathers were divided into hostile camps, Arminian or 
Calvinist, over the question whether Christ died for all 



My Belief 

or only for the elect ! To-day the question will be 
whether He died for any, or even whether He ever lived 
or died at all. Even a generation ago, thought was 
agitated on the subject of Eternal Punishment. Were 
sinners annihilated after death, or punished in eternal 
flames, or finally restored ? How heated was the con- 
troversy ! The universalists were sure that the Gospel 
was failing because it was identified with the doctrine 
of hell fire ; the advocates of conditional immortality 
believed that they had saved Christendom, and opened 
a new era for missions, by proving that the soul is not 
immortal, but only lives after death through Christ ; 
while the defenders of the old dogma were confident 
that the other parties undermined the faith altogether ; 
if they did not believe in the devil, they would not 
believe in Christ ; if there was no eternal hell, there 
was no eternal life. 

How distant and unreal all this seems to us, when 
the question is whether we live after death at all. For 
the first time in recorded history a vast body of people 
definitely disbelieve in immortality. Modern life is 
increasingly organised, men live and work, without a 
thought of the hereafter. What was once an axiom, 
the immortality of the soul, is now a problem, and for 
many an unsolved problem. 

It often seems to me as if the old heaven and earth 
had vanished away ; we have emerged into a new 
hemisphere, with a different atmosphere and alien stars. 
Nothing maybe assumed; everything must be proved 
afresh. The fifteen questions, or problems, in a sense, 
cover the ground ; and yet I am quite prepared to learn 

10 



The Difficulties Stated 

that they do not touch the position of many serious 
enquirers ; my whole standpoint may challenge the 
criticism of some, and raise the violent antagonisms of 
others. I will therefore bestow some time in stating 
as clearly and as succinctly as possible, the points 
which are to be raised, so that the reader may see at a 
glance whether the book is likely to help him. For let 
me say at the beginning, the whole object of writing is to 
help people. It is presumption to think that I can do 
so ! Well, my excuse must be that I gave my life to 
that task when I left the University. So far as my 
ability went I have studied the problems, and lived in 
the life, of my time. And though I have accomplished 
so little in the eyes of men, I have had evidences, some- 
times touching and overwhelming, that my efforts to 
help have not been in vain. My statement of the 
problems has been recognised as correct, and my 
solution of them has been accepted as satisfactory. 

Problem i 

Is religion needed at all ? Or is it a phase through 
which mankind passed in its infancy, but which we are 
now outgrowing ? 

M. Guyau published in France some years ago a 
book on the non-religion of the future; the clever 
writer depicted a civilized world from which the idea of 
God, and worship, and a future life, had disappeared. 
Everything in France pointed in that direction. Oddly 
enough towards the end of the book the author's heart 
misgave him. He was smitten by the dreariness, the 

ii 



My Belief 

hopelessness, the meaninglessness of a world without 
religion. Perhaps he remembered his distinguished 
countryman of the eighteenth century, Voltaire, who, 
in 1760, prophesied that " before the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, Christianity will have disappeared 
from the earth." Still M. Guyau believed, whether he 
liked it or not, that religion must go, and man in the 
future would live contentedly without God and without 
hope in the world. 

In Germany the same temper is apparent. Haeckel 
has not perhaps as much influence in his own country 
as he has among our enlightened and pure-living 
working people ; but he is one of the few writers who 
is known throughout the Fatherland, and his denial 
of God, the Soul, and Immortality, is accepted by the 
cultured classes at the top, and by the Socialists at the 
other end of the scale. Germany has little more than 
an official belief in religion. 

Our own country is considered the most religious in 
the world. Nowhere else is churchgoing so general. 
And yet, we who live here admit that the vast bulk of 
the people are indifferent to religion. The upper classes 
make little pretence of worship, except perhaps in the 
country, for ancestral or picturesque reasons : they 
occupy the family pew in order to link themselves with 
defunct families. To mention religion, except in the 
ceremonial sense, is a mark of ill-breeding. In society, 
if anyone spoke of Christ, the delinquent would be 
marked and avoided. If we look into Booth's account 
of religious life in London, or Mudie Smith's still more 
exhaustive enquiry, we- observe that already religious 

12 



The Difficulties Stated 

worship is an eccentricity of a minority. Vast districts 
of the metropolis have not so much religion as the pagan 
tribes of Nigeria. In that benighted land, Dr. Kumm 
found a tribe which, knowing nothing of the white 
man's religion except that there was in it a Sabbath, 
observed the day of rest in a dumb longing to mingle 
with the higher faith of which they had heard. But 
four-fifths of the people of British cities have no such 
desire or practice. They welcome the weekly holiday ; 
but it has no religious significance for them. They 
might never have heard of God, or of worship, of the 
soul, or of heaven. 

In view therefore of the facts of Christendom, the 
question must be faced, and answered, Is religion 
necessary? Perhaps Guyau and Haeckel, and Mr. 
Blatchford, and Mr. Robertson are right. Has the 
time come when mankind should make an effort and be 
rid once and for ever of God, and the obligations of a 
spiritual world ? May the sensationalist philosophy 
be said to have triumphed ? Is Positivism justified ? 
Do the things of sense furnish a sufficient basis for 
thought and life ? Ought we to proceed to organise 
human life on this materialistic basis, and to dismiss 
the thoughts of the divine and the spiritual as a mis- 
leading dream ? 

But supposing we are led by the experience of man- 
kind, and by the recognition of the spiritual factors 
in human life, to admit that religion is necessary, 
and that man, so far forth as he is a man, must 
be religious ; and if it follows from this that it is 
of vital importance to get the best and the truest 

13 



My Belief 

religion, the modern mind is immediately confronted 
by- 

Problem 2 

The study which proves the necessity of Religion is 
that of Comparative Religion. The religions of the 
world, the great positive religions, the nature-religions, 
the dim superstitions of uncivilized man, are examined 
side by side. Christianity is one amongst many. We 
may not assume, as our fathers did, that it is the only 
religion, while the rest are systems of delusion and even 
of fraud. We may not even take it for granted that 
Christianity is the best. 

Perhaps there are few persons in Christendom who 
will adopt deliberately one of the other positive reli- 
gions. The converts to Mohammedanism might be 
numbered on the fingers of your hand. Not many 
English people have yet become Hindus or even 
Buddhists. But Theosophy puts in a counterclaim to 
Christianity. And the possibility that Mrs. Besant is 
the herald of a new dawn, a new Messiah for a Godless 
and Christless world, must be faced by the candid 
enquirer. 

Does Christianity hold its own in the competition 
with other systems ? 

May we satisfy the religious instinct, be spiritual 
beings, have an outlook beyond the senses, a belief in 
life beyond the grave, life endless and expanding, and 
yet cast aside the faith of our childhood? Is that 
dream of Arthur Hugh Clough, Christ sitting as a 
forlorn ghost on the side of His tomb, recognising that 

14 



The Difficulties Stated 

His empire is passing, to be accepted as prophetic of 
the future ? 

Science denies the supernatural; criticism tears to 
pieces the documents of the faith. Is Christianity to 
give place to another and better religion ? 

But if it is established that Christianity is the best we 
have or are likely to have, if the mind is tolerably 
settled in the general acceptance of the Christian 
revelation, immediately it is confronted with — 



Problem 3 

For nearly three centuries it was in this country a 
foregone conclusion that the Reformed religion had 
superseded the Catholic Church. When Newman 
with his great prestige led over to Rome a large section 
of the clergy and nobility and professional people of 
the Established Church, it seemed to our fathers like 
an incredible dream. Surely, they thought, that ques- 
tion had for us at any rate been settled ; giant Pope 
grinning toothless in his cave, surrounded by the bones 
of the slaughtered saints, was not any longer to be taken 
seriously. 

The Papacy has plunged heavily on the downward 
road. Its blunders, since the declaration of Infallibility, 
have been increasing and incredible. The excommuni- 
cation of Professor Mivart, more recently of Father 
Tyrrell, would, we suppose, have demonstrated to 
Englishmen, if to none else, that in the line of the 
Papacy no hope lies for the modern world. But the 
Puseyite movement in the English Church has produced 

15 



My Belief 

a surprising softness for Rome. Pius X. has much more 
power in this country than in any country which is 
nominally subject to his See. And the alternative, 
Rome or the Reformation ? is a practical and pressing 
one for many enquiring spirits. 

The old polemic against Catholicism is out of date ; 
the methods and the tone of it are unsuitable to the 
modern world. If we are to be Protestants, we must 
be Protestants of a new type ; we must understand 
the position better. Our antagonism to Rome must be 
more respectful, more sympathetic, and for that reason 
more firm and more uncompromising. Our objection 
to the Roman Church does not lie on the ground of 
new abuses — all earthly systems are liable to abuse and 
corruption — it lies on the ground of the radical mistake 
of her claims, of her creed, of her policy. 

Possibly no disaster could be greater for the world, 
not even M. Guyau's " Non-religion of the Future," 
than that the Reformed countries should revert to the 
condition of those countries which never threw off the 
Roman obedience. If England should become as 
France, Germany as Austria, and America as Spain, we 
might well despair for the future of the race. 

Problem 4 

But assuming that the Protestant attitude is accepted, 
another question forces itself on the modern mind. The 
orthodoxy of Protestantism is crumbling more rapidly 
than the authority of Catholicism. The liberal theology 
which acquired a singular lustre in the United States 

16 



The Difficulties Stated 

through Channing and Parker and the brilliant literary 
circle which they influenced, and which commanded the 
allegiance of Martineau, one of the saintliest as well as 
one of the most philosophical minds of the nineteenth 
century, makes a powerful appeal to thoughtful and 
large-minded men. The fact that the most living 
movement in the Lutheran Church is of the same 
complexion produces a powerful effect on English 
Protestants, because we get most of our theology from 
Germany. 

And thus the problem becomes acute to many people 
who are Protestants and have no intention of surrender- 
ing their Protestantism : Is Unitarianism after all right ? 
Was Christ only a man ? Are the doctrines of the 
Incarnation, of the Atonement, of the Resurrection, 
ecclesiastical figments ? Perhaps few people are inclined 
to become Unitarians, for that body has a reputation of 
cold intellectualism and aloofness which repels the 
ordinary mind. But the doctrine of Unitarianism, or 
at least the latitudinarian tone of thought, possesses 
a singular attraction just now. "We wish to be 
Christians and Protestants," say many people, " but 
we dislike dogma, and we prefer to sum up our position 
in a sentence : The Fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man." 

Problem 5 

The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of 
Protestants — what an echo from a distant past ! At 
the present time it might rather be said, " The Bible, 
and the Bible alone, is the problem of Protestants." 

17 B 



My Belief 

The old dogmatic view which invested the Book with 
a divine authority, assumed that every word was 
written by the Holy Ghost, and therefore established 
religious doctrines and settled religious questions by a 
comparison, or even a quotation, of texts, held its own 
with all the appearance of finality almost to our own 
day. Mr. Spurgeon was strong in that infallible 
position. But no power on earth can carry the mind 
of to-day back to that position. The plainest literary 
facts, the most unquestioned scientific results, are 
against it. If a preacher attempts to maintain it, he 
can do so only by violence and vituperation ; he brings 
the Bible and himself into disrepute. The old view of 
infallibility or inerrancy, of finality and completeness, 
has gone. And yet the Bible is more wonderful, and 
even more authoritative, than ever. It is as if the 
trammels had been removed ; it lives and speaks with 
a new freedom and power. But the problem, the 
pressing problem, is, how to regard and use the Book 
which appears in this new light. The infalliblists and 
the infidels are equally wrong. How are we to readjust 
our views ? Given a book which lays no claim to 
infallibility, a collection of writings which were brought 
together by some intrinsic, though unknown, process of 
selection, how are we to know what is true in it, and 
how are we to apply it in establishing religious beliefs, 
and in the practice of the religious life ? 

Problem 6 

Did miracles happen ? or are we required by science 
to rule them out of court ? If we cannot believe the 

18 



The Difficulties Stated 

miraculous stories of the Bible, does that discredit the 
religion of the Bible ? There are those who believe in 
miracles as easily as they believe in ordinary events ; 
on the other hand, there are those who cannot for a 
moment admit the miraculous into their scheme of 
thought. But is there room for a third view ? May 
we not hold with Hume and Huxley that there is no 
antecedent impossibility in miracles, but that it is a 
matter of evidence ? If the evidence is sufficient we 
must believe in the miracle. And if this is the genuinely 
scientific view, is it not possible to discriminate, and, in 
the Bible as in ordinary experience, to believe that some 
miracles are proved while others are not ? The solution 
of the problem may lie in getting rid of the artificial 
and dogmatic authority, whether of the Church or of 
the Bible, and in learning to take every incident on its 
own merits. It is possible that, while in former days 
many were won to believe in the Gospel by the miracles 
in the record, many are now deterred from the faith by 
those same miracles. There is the greatest need for 
discrimination. To get rid of the confusion and 
difficulty that beset this subject might open the 
kingdom of heaven to many believers. 

Problem 7 

When the Bible was written, and when the Christian 
creed was formulated, no one questioned that the earth 
was the central point of the universe, that the sun and 
stars were set in the vault of heaven to give us light, 
and that the drama of humanity is the chief concern of 

19 B 2 



My Belief 

God. With this cosmography as the background of the 
mind, it was not difficult to believe that God should 
walk in the Garden of Eden and talk face to face with 
man, or that the Son of God should become man, in order 
to save the race which had blundered and fallen. But 
Astronomy has completely altered the background. The 
earth is one of the smaller planets of the sun, which itself 
is but a star of small magnitude among the myriads which 
crowd the heavens. The vast distances of the universe 
strain the most trained imagination. The anthropo- 
centric view of the universe, which is always presupposed 
in the Bible, and in all Christian theologies hitherto 
formulated, has become difficult to maintain. We are 
like men who have entered a dark room with a candle, 
assuming that the light would suffice, suddenly admitted 
into a vast and awful cavern, in which the flickering 
rays of the candle serve only to reveal the impenetrable 
gloom. The cosmic terror is upon us ; we are encom- 
passed with what seems to be an infinity of matter; 
and our religion, which shed a light, lurid perhaps, but 
sufficient, on a little world with the lucent heaven just 
above, and the flaming hell just below, seems inappli- 
cable to the awful distances and magnitudes which have 
opened on our imagination. Our anthropomorphism 
has betrayed us ; our conception of God as a greater 
man fails us, as in the old pagan world the many gods 
and goddesses, thoroughly human both in virtue and 
vice, failed the men on whom the light of the Gospel 
arose. Granted that Christ was the Light of the World, 
can He be the Light of the Universe ? Does His reli- 
gion hold in the mighty scheme which science reveals ? 

20 



The Difficulties Stated 

Problem 8 

If a man die, shall he live again ? This question of 
the ancient religion seemed answered once and for 
ever by the Gospel of the Resurrection. Throughout 
Christendom this problem has been practically quiescent 
for hundreds of years. Every graveyard bears eloquent 
testimony to the faith in which men have lived and died. 
Resurgam is the tacit assumption of every Christian, 
even of the most nominal Christian. But with the decay 
of authority, the emancipation of the Church, and the 
doubtful attitude towards the Bible, an extraordinary 
revulsion of feeling has come. Attempts have been 
made to discover by questionnaires what men actually 
believe and feel on the subject, and it appears that fully 
half the population is utterly indifferent about a future 
life. Probably more than half do not allow the thought 
of the future to influence them. They are unmoved by 
the joys of heaven and by the terrors of hell. They 
believe that Science has in some unknown way shown 
that survival after death is impossible, and they hold that 
the eschatology of Christianity, the four last things, 
death and judgment, heaven and hell, are figments, 
like the inferno, purgatorio and paradiso of Dante's 
" Commedia." 

Thus it is an open question, one which ought to be 
discussed and settled for each man's practical guidance, 
Does death end all? 

Problem 9 

Is prayer a rational occupation ? Can it be heard or 
answered ? Men believe now, as far as they believe 

21 



My Belief 

in anything, in the Reign of Law. It is of course a 
blind faith, for which not one in a thousand could 
offer a plausible reason. But it is the accepted dogma, 
the starting point of all thought and practice, that God, 
if there be a God, has regulated everything by fixed 
laws, and that everything happens in conformity with 
the same. If this Power, call it God or not as you 
please, is wise and good, better leave things to it or 
Him. If this Power is not wise and good and intelli- 
gent, it is vain to pray to it. In either case prayer 
is useless. I remember meeting a very intelligent and 
cultivated young woman many years ago who told me 
that she had given up prayer as a waste of time. She 
was able to give the time thus saved to some more 
useful employment, I think it was the reading of the 
works of John Stuart Mill. Thus many give up prayer on 
principle, as many others give it up through indolence, 
through selfishness, through vice. And as Mrs. Besant 
says, " God quickly fades out of the life of those who do 
not pray." If we were all convinced that prayer is 
reasonable, useful, effectual, and if we all began to pray 
regularly, earnestly, believingly, we should see a singular 
transformation, the whole world bound by a golden chain 
about the throne of God, as the poet dreamed. 

Problem io 

Nothing agitates the modern mind more in certain 
moods, and it is the practice of the Roman Church 
to exasperate the difficulty, than the variety and com- 
plexity of religious opinion within the compass of 

22 



The Difficulties Stated 

Christianity. In the background of most minds is the 
tacit supposition, the survival of the medieval dogma, 
that there must be one plain, explicit, and fully elabo- 
rated statement of truth which all men might and ought 
to accept. When therefore it is found that in every 
thoughtful and instructed community, so soon as the 
incubus of a blind and unreasoning authority is removed, 
there is the utmost diversity of view, the indolent and 
the indifferent are disposed to plead, that as there are so 
many opinions, it is not necessary or possible to decide 
between them. " Because others have different views of 
Christianity, I will have none. Because all do not 
agree about the organisation of the Church, I will 
remain aloof from it altogether. Because different 
interpretations are offered of salvation, I will not be 
saved. Because heaven is conceived by some as a 
place, by others as a state, and is reached in the opinion 
of some by works, and in the opinion of others by faith, 
I will not seek it, either as state or place, either by 
faith or works." 

In this way the diversity of creed, which is due to 
liberty and the energy of life, becomes, to the lethargic 
and servile mind, an excuse for indifference. 

Problem ii 

No difficulty is more common or more elusive, than 
the complaint of the absence of a certain religious 
experience, which others, it is supposed, have, and the 
pretext it offers for giving up religion altogether. " I 
have tried faith, and prayer, and religious practices, I 

23 



My Belief 

have gone all lengths in these efforts, but I have no 
inner response ; I have no assurance of salvation, or 
even of the reality of these spiritual things. I do not 
doubt that others have this experience, but as it does 
not come to me, I give it up." Here the doubt is not 
speculative at all. There is no wish to dispute the 
evidence, or to deny the facts, of Christianity. On the 
contrary there is a readiness to admit the truth, and a 
genuine desire to possess it. We may surmise that 
minds in this condition are the victims of an illusion ; 
that baseless illusion stops the conduit of the spiritual 
life. They imagine the experience of others, precisely 
as that which they have not ; they do not realise the 
individuality of all experience. It is necessary therefore 
to direct their attention to the facts of their own 
experience, and to show that their experience of faith is 
for them precisely the same as that experience of others 
which they imagine is for those others. 

Problem 12 

There is a problem which presses heavily and in 
many forms on the modern mind, and is often a reason, 
and more often a pretext, for surrendering Christianity. 
It is, briefly stated, the social question. The actual 
conditions of life in this country are disturbing and 
hard to reconcile with the Christian verities, or even 
with the goodness and power of God. The competitive 
system in business drives men into practices which they 
feel to be unchristian ; they surrender religion to escape 
hypocrisy. Or the sight of the sufferings and degrada- 
tion of the poor, or of the wealth of the greedy and 

24 



The Difficulties Stated 

unscrupulous ; the contrast between the West End 
palaces and the slums which defile the other parts of the 
city; the apparent indifference of Christians to the 
struggles and rights of the workers ; the observation of 
prominent Christians as hard masters, or unscrupulous 
competitors, in their daily business: these and other 
things embitter the mind and produce a revolt against 
Christianity. When the root of bitterness is implanted 
it quickly grows. And to-day there are multitudes of 
people more or less earnest who spend all their strength 
in attacking Christianity and religion generally, in the 
supposed interests of the people and especially of the 
poor. It is a curious anomaly ; the faith which at the 
beginning was derided by the world, by the cultured 
critics like Porphyry and Celsus, because it cared for 
the poor and appealed to the poor, the religion which 
has been the only steady force of social amelioration 
in the modern world, is now attacked and rejected by 
the poor and their advocates. 

Either Christians or Christianity must be strangely 
misunderstood. 

Problem 13 

There is a curious return to Paganism in the modern 
world. Men and women, especially in youth, do not 
reject Christianity or trouble themselves to find another 
religion ; but they hand themselves over frankly to the 
beauty and charm of the world, without an afterthought 
for God, or the soul, or duty to man. Many who in 
former days would have been ravished by the beauty of 
holiness are now attracted only by beauty of another 

25 



My Belief 

kind, and as if by a reaction can hardly recognise 
beauty unless it is connected with unholiness. They 
who never can be satisfied except by the love of God, 
plunge without restraint into any love whatever, always 
provided that it is not the love of God. Like the neo- 
paganism of the Renaissance this maybe only a passing 
phase. But for the moment it is a powerful reaction 
against Christianity. First it was a disgust with Puri- 
tanism and the bourgeoisie ; then it became a scepticism 
about the sanctions of all morality ; presently it glorified 
excesses as the evidence of liberty ; now it craves for 
the unclean in literature and art, finding decency dull 
and purity insipid. Unless a play or a novel is dealing 
with immorality our neo-pagans remain quite un- 
interested. Christianity has no claim upon them ; if 
Christ were here they would unhesitatingly crucify Him ; 
or if with the early Christians they were asked to decide 
between Christ or Diana, they would answer, " Of the 
two, Diana, but let me rather have Aphrodite and Pan." 
In this amazing problem of the modern world 
Christianity has to repeat the work which it did at 
the beginning. 

Problem 14 

The most persistent, and the most distressing, 
problem with which I am to deal in the following 
pages, is that which arises from the existence of evil 
and of pain. If we are not very sensitive to sin we 
have become morbidly sensitive to pain. And as in 
the old theologies man was charged with sin, in the 
irreverent scepticism of to-day the charge is retorted on 

26 



The Difficulties Stated 

God. How is the pain of the world reconcilable with 
the idea of God as love ? Many a sensitive observer, 
and even sometimes the active workers in the relief of 
suffering, have been driven into dumb doubt, and a 
despairing atheism, by the brute action of natural law, 
the cruelty of social conditions, the unlimited variety 
of pain to which humanity is subject. Hinton's brave 
attempt to solve the mystery of pain either leaves them 
unsatisfied, or perhaps is not known to them, so brief 
is the life of famous books. The cry of revolt goes 
up to heaven ; the Church itself is paralysed with a 
doubt. 

Others, considering Evil as a whole, carry their 
revolt to defiance. Accepting the scientific position 
which limits or annihilates the freedom of the will, they 
maintain that God is Himself the author of all things, 
of the order we know, of the evil and of the good. By 
a daring reversal of the position they charge their 
Creator with folly in making them, because they are 
evil, and hope to repudiate the responsibility of sin by 
exalting the omnipotence of God. 

This latent revolt in the human soul, the anarchy 
which comes from a waning faith in the Divine Ruler 
of the world, is a bar to all religion. If it is justified 
or justifiable, we certainly should be driven to sur- 
render the Gospel, the Christian hope, the faith in 
God. It would be useless to strive with Fate. We 
could not maintain the struggle for good, or the hope 
of progress. Not only religion, but morality, would 
go. Mankind would relapse into despair, and nothing 
is so demoralising as despair. 

27 



My Belief 

Problem 15 

The last difficulty to be faced is, Was there an 
Atonement in the death of Jesus ? Is atonement 
necessary, or does not God forgive men when they 
repent, as we forgive those who trespass against us ? 
Is atonement even possible ? How can the sins of 
the guilty be transferred to the guiltless ? What justice 
or reason is there in the idea of God accepting the 
sufferings of Christ in place of the punishment which 
is due to us for our sins ? In Protestant, and especially 
in Evangelical, religion, the Atonement occupies so 
central a place, that when it is discredited or even 
questioned, the whole system seems to be shattered. 
As the dogma was made central and indispensable, 
when doubt assails the mind concerning it, the 
doubter is very apt to give up, not the dogmas, but 
Christianity itself. It would be valuable sometimes 
to realise what remains if the Atonement is left out 
altogether. Has there been a false emphasis, and has 
a truth which is essentially a mystery, and inexplic- 
able, been brought into a perilous prominence, so that 
Christianity seems to stand or fall with its acceptance 
and explanation ? This problem has occupied the 
ingenuity and speculation of Christians for thirty years. 
Must it now recede into the position which it occupied 
from the time of Paul to that of Anselm, a fact of 
pragmatic value, because it was a subject of constant 
experience, but not a speculative question at all, 
because we have not the materials for settling it 
theoretically ? 

28 



The Difficulties Stated 

These fifteen problems do, as I say, in a sense cover 
the ground of religious difficulties to-day. Others may 
be involved in them, but there can be none outside 
them. If only these could be satisfactorily solved, 
everything would be done. I know how impossible it 
is to deal with them adequately, and there will be many 
to whom my solutions will appear not only scanty but 
untrue. On the other hand, what has helped some, or 
even one, may help others. I will proceed to handle 
the problems to the best of my ability. 

But before we advance, let us pause to reflect on the 
fact that religion is beset with so many difficulties, some 
of them old as the world, others of them peculiar to the 
present time. Is it a stumbling-block that the way is 
never plain, that the course is never clear ? Let the 
reader take heart. In matters of religion difficulties are 
the means of progress. I offer you an illustration. The 
feathers of a bird are so constructed and arranged that 
the mere weight of the body falling propels it through 
the air, and the force of the wind which meets it will 
carry it against the wind. For the feathers yield, and 
so slant. The air rushing against the slanting plumes 
carries the bird forward, as the wind on the adjusted 
sail carries the ship. So is it with the feathers of the 
soul ; they are so arranged that the weight of the 
questioning, or the strong blast of doubt, impels and 
advances the religious life. 

Nothing kills religion so quickly as a closed creed, or 
an infallible authority. Nothing revivifies it like the 
discovery of new truths, the opening of wider horizons, 
the necessity for revising and discriminating. It is 

29 



My Belief 

impossible to question the wisdom and the love of God 
in this singular ordinance of life, that we attain truth 
with effort, that we reach certainty through doubt, that 
we are never able to sit down and rest, but must always 
be up and doing. It is precisely the strain, the effort, 
the rebuff, which develops and trains the spiritual 
faculty. 

If questions are settled for you, if you never face new 
problems, if you do and believe what you are told, you 
may be good children, but you can never be men. 
If Christianity had been the infallible doctrine which 
the Roman Church appears to guarantee, men could 
never have grown. Not only would scientific progress 
have been impossible, Galileo imprisoned and Bruno 
burnt, but spiritual life would have died. There is a 
time for milk ; but the time for strong meat also comes. 
If the Papal Church could have her desire, that time 
would never come ; men would always remain babes. 

And even if the Bible were such a book as the old 
dogma demanded, a closed canon of religious truth, 
in which every sentence was a considered and final 
word of God, the effect would have been as disastrous 
as the effect of the Koran is in Islam. It is the difficulty 
and complexity of the Bible, the open questions, the 
activity of criticism, the new discoveries of science or 
archaeology demanding readjustment, the disproofs as 
well as the proofs, which make the book, not so much 
a Code or a Symbol, or a Confession of Faith, as a 
spiritual gymnasium, in which the soul is trained by 
searching, enquiring, discriminating. 

Indeed it is a fair inference from the facts of life that 

30 



The Difficulties Stated 

we are here, not to rest, but to strive ; not to reach 
truth but to be ever seeking it. Such problems as are 
discussed in the following pages may be partially and 
temporarily solved ; in seeking their solution we gather 
strength and joy. But for those who come after us 
they will be presented in new forms, and others will be 
added to them. And if the present world is necessarily 
a scene of questioning and seeking, a battle which does 
not admit of disarming or permanent bivouac, we can 
hardly resist the witness of the instinct within us, which 
declares that a rest remaineth, and that though now 
we see through a glass darkly, we shall in the world 
beyond see face to face. 

Books recommended: "The Knowledge of God," by Professor 
Gwatkin (T. and T. Clark) ; " Christian Theism and a Spiritual 
Monism," by Rev. W. L. Walker (T. and T. Clark). 



31 



II 

IS RELIGION NECESSARY? 

Professor William James, dividing mankind into 
the " tender " and the " tough," i.e., the idealist and the 
materialist, and admitting that the bulk of mankind 
blend in themselves the two extremes, says in his 
sparkling way: " If radically tough, the hurly-burly of the 
sensible facts of Nature will be enough for you, and you 
will need no religion at all." * That would imply that 
persons of a certain disposition, persons of the highest 
value to society, admirable in character and conduct, may 
yet do without religion. Professor James is so profound 
a student of human nature, and especially of the varieties 
of the religious side of human nature, that it is presump- 
tuous to dispute his verdict. It must be allowed that in 
the sense that religion is understood, there may be and 
there are a vast number of persons in Christendom 
who do without it. They do not admit or even betray 
any missing. I remember a writer in the Fortnightly 
Review some time ago declaring that the question of 
religion, the being of God, the immortality of the 
soul, etc., had not the faintest interest for him. The 
hurly-burly of the sensible facts of Nature, the satisfac- 
tion of appetite, the business or profession, the public 
life of the community, or perhaps the delights of Nature, 

1 " Pragmatism," p. 301. 
32 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

of science, of literature or of art, are all that such men 
desire in life ; and of such things they get on the whole 
enough to make them content. To worship, to pray, 
to enquire into the ways or will of God, to meditate or 
treat seriously the Christian revelation, does not occur 
to them. If they are losers by the omission they are 
unconscious of it. If there is a future life, a judgement 
seat and an account to give, they will with a serene con- 
science quote the sentiment of the Preacher l , and will, 
so far as they know, anticipate no ill consequences. 

These men and women may, in popular phrase, be 
said to be without religion. They are not irreligious, 
sacrilegious, profane; they are non-religious, of the world, 
and confined to the world. 

But when we come to ask for a satisfactory, a 
sufficiently inclusive definition of religion, we are not 
able to admit that the " radically tough " are, on 
account of their temperament, or natural bias, without 
religion. For religion is " the conception which we 
form of the Power that is responsible for our being, 
our relation to that Power, and the course of life which 
results from the conception and the relation." To be 
without religion therefore would be to be without any 
conception of the meaning or the end of life ; that is 
to say, it would be to be something less than human. 
No one possessed of his reason can be without thought. 
Everyone must have some idea of the Power which 
brought him into being: Haeckel may be of opinion 
that the Power is an unintelligent force, Herbert 
Spencer may regard it as an unknown and unknowable, 

1 eccl. ix. 8 — II. 

33 c 



My Belief 

but indisputable fact, or with the great bulk of men we 
may call it God ; but our conception of that Power, 
however crude or inadequate it may be, is the basis of 
our religion. On that basis a man may relate himself 
to the Power, just as an unconscious fact of Nature is 
related to it, and fancy himself an automaton ; or, 
regarding the Power as unknown, he may shape his 
relation to it as simply his own scheme of thought about 
it, or he may regard the Power as a person and enter 
into living relations with Him. In the first case the 
course of life resulting will be mechanical and unreflect- 
ing, without sense of responsibility, without moral 
expansion : Haeckel, for instance, presents a moral life 
so jejune and attenuated that it is hardly distinguishable 
from that of the higher animals. In the second case 
the life may be strenuous and noble, but it must be 
intrinsically sad and hopeless; thus Herbert Spencer n 
his Autobiography expresses a curious regret for the 
religious life which he had lost and for the neglect of 
that side of his nature which in others he saw developed. 
In the third case, i.e., where the conception of God as a 
Person leads to a conscious relation with Him, life may 
become a task fulfilled under the great Taskmaster's 
eye, expectant of His approbation, and all the wealth of 
experience and endeavour which are familiar to us in 
the lives of eminent Christians become possible. 

But each of these types is religious in its own way ; 
each has, and must have, a religion. A creature with- 
out religion is, so far forth, not a man at all. Man 
might be sufficiently defined as "a religious animal," 
for by the constitution of his mind, directly he emerges 

34 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

out of the evolutionary process from the previous 
stages of development, that is to say, so soon as he is 
human and becomes a subject of anthropology, he begins 
to form some idea of the Power that made him, to enter 
into some relation with it, and to live the life which 
is determined by that relation. 

The most godless, sacrilegious wretch living has a 
religion. It may be a religion without God, or in 
defiance of God. For God he may think only of Fate 
or of Luck, and act accordingly. His relation to the 
Power that made him may be only one of revolt and 
defiance. But bad as it is, that is his religion. 

But this being the case, the question will be, not, Is 
religion necessary ? but, What religion is right ? Is 
there God, or only a blind, unintelligent Force ? If 
there is God, can we know Him ? If we can know 
Him, what can we know ? Can we enter into relations 
with Him ? Can our lives be lived on the basis of 
that relationship ? 

It will be self-evident that if the Eternal and Infinite 
Power which is responsible for our being is God, if we 
can know Him, and if we can enter into relations with 
Him, we are bound to conform our lives to His will 
and purpose. 

Now while it is quite possible that atheistic religions 
may exist, and may produce certain results — Haeckel's 
religion is atheistic, for example, and Haeckel is an 
interesting and useful factor in the science of our time ; 
or again, Buddhism, at least in its origin, was 
atheistic, and that religion has had and still has a great 
influence on the world — the general instinct of mankind 

35 c 2 



My Belief 

points to the recognition of a personal God. Is that 
belief necessary, are there reasons cogent enough to 
prove it ? Can it be said that, if to be without religion 
is to be something less than man, to be without God 
is to be something less than religious ? 

The arguments by which Theism is defended, the On- 
tological argument, the argument from Causation, the 
argument from Design, do not appeal very powerfully 
to the present generation. For the examination of them 
the reader may be referred to Professor Flint's lectures 
on Theism. But there is an argument which has sprung 
into prominence with the closer study of psychology, 
and it appeals with direct and living force to people of 
our time. Mr. Illingworth, in his book " Personality, 
Human and Divine," has made that argument accessible 
to all thoughtful readers. Perhaps I may offer the 
results of that book in another form. 

So long as the mind is directed to the universe of 
phenomena, the Maker of the universe may be easily 
conceived as a Workman, who works on the gigantic 
scale, as we work on a minute scale. But it may also 
be contended that the Maker is nothing more than the 
inherent force which initiates and continues evolution. 
While therefore the mind is directed only to phenomena, 
it is possible to argue for a Being, a Cause, a Designer, 
as the Author of Nature ; but on the other hand it is 
possible to say that the Being or Cause is impersonal, 
and to treat the evidences of design as merely the 
accidental results of the evolutionary process. 

But when the mind is directed to the observation of 
itself, and it begins to realise the significance of its 

36 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

own consciousness, and to grasp the idea of personality, 
it finds an ever increasing difficulty in the idea of Being 
apart from thought, of cause apart from Will, ot 
development without purpose. The retrospection on 
which all ordered thinking in modern times depends 
drives the mind irresistibly to one conclusion, viz. : 
that the Power which is responsible for the All cannot 
be less or lower in kind than the Ego, at present 
engaged in thought, which is responsible for a minute 
part of the whole. That is to say, if I hesitate to call 
that Power a Person, because to me a person is limited, 
an item in a great whole, while the Power must be 
Infinite, indeed the whole itself, I cannot hesitate to 
say that the Power is, at the lowest, personal ; must 
have at least the qualities of thought and will and 
purpose which constitute my own personality, though 
I must immediately recognise that the Personality so 
conceived, the Being that conceived, the Will that 
executed, the purpose which designed the universe, are 
as far beyond my capacity of conception as the ocean 
is beyond the capacity of a cup. 

The more this line of reasoning is pursued the more 
certitude grows in the mind that in the Power which is 
responsible for the world we have to do with Intelli- 
gence, Will, Purpose, working by processes which we 
imperfectly and slowly discover ; or, in other words, 
that the Power is personal, that is, God. 

The most direct and convincing argument, therefore, 
for God is accessible to thought, and may be made 
plain to everyone who will take the trouble to think. 
As the argument cannot possibly be evaded, those who 

37 



My Belief 

deny the existence of Gcd are under the responsibility 
of refusing to think. They might be sure of God, as 
they are sure of their own existence. The reasoning is 
not intricate ; it is direct. It does not demand 
elaborate training in the logic and metaphysics of 
the schools. It requires only calm and unbiassed 
reflection; and such reflection is surely obligatory on 
every one who is 

" A being drawing thoughtful breath, 
A traveller between birth and death." 

But this argument for showing that God is, carries 
us a great deal further, and when supplemented by 
other facts of immediate observation, shows us to some 
extent what God is. Always granting, as even Herbert 
Spencer granted, that we must admit the personality 
of God, we know, and must know, much more about 
Him than Spencer perceived. He is not unknowable, 
nor unknown. To begin with, if in finding that God is, 
we find, as we have seen, that He is Intelligence, that 
in itself carries us very far beyond the limits of 
Agnosticism. We may therefore dwell a little more 
particularly, not only on the intelligence in us which 
assures us of Intelligence as Creator, but also on the 
intelligence in Nature which appeals to us as intelligent. 
Little as some scientific men realise it, the fact of 
science is a broad and convincing proof of God as personal. 
For unless the universe were an order, a cosmos, governed 
by fixed and ascertainable laws, there could be no science 
at all. But " order," " uniformities," " laws," all imply 
intelligence. Every scientific enquiry is sustained, and 
every scientific conclusion is secured, by faith, that is, by 

38 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

the underlying conviction that the scheme of things is a 
scheme, and not a succession of chances. The globe 
spins through space, the atmosphere and other physical 
conditions of life on the planet are maintained, every 
living thing lives, and the whole society of graded life on 
the earth continues and evolves, by virtue of an inherent 
principle which is described in the Book of Wisdom, 
as " reaching from one end of the world to the other 
with full strength and ordering all things graciously." 1 

As the ancient thinkers taught, as the Roman poets 
sang, there is a mind in Nature which nourishes all the 
parts and maintains the unity. Not to seek recondite 
illustrations, keeping within the bounds of universal 
observation, what is the vis medicatrix natures- on which 
we instinctively rely ? If a wound is made in the body, 
immediately a process is set up, which can only be 
compared with a gang of workmen sent post haste to a 
wrecked train. I do not control those busy workers, 
that St. John's Ambulance in the blood and nerves of my 
own body. I do not even know how they work. It is 
an Intelligence other than my own which restores the 
balance, invigorates the weak part, heals the wound. 
An unthinking Science thinks to evade enquiry by 
describing this as the healing power of Nature. But 
directly we think we recognise that the healing power 
is intelligent, not only intelligent as a doctor, but much 
more so ; more subtle, more rapid, more resourceful. 

Natural history teems with, nay, may be said to con- 
sist of, illustrations of the same fact. A breed of sheep 
from our own colder climate introduced into the West 

1 wisd. viii. i. 

39 



My Belief 

Indies will in two or three generations alter the thick 
warm fleece for a fine hair adapted to the warm climate. 
Natural selection may be a plausible formula for record- 
ing how the change is effected, but it cannot evade the 
point that Nature selects, that is, acts in a way which is 
intelligent, a way which can only be associated in our 
minds with personality. Or examine, with Maeterlinck, 
a hive of bees. The modern mystic has repeated the 
exquisite argument in Virgil's "Georgics," with greater 
wealth of knowledge, but with less spiritual insight. The 
unmistakable fact is that there is a soul of the swarm, 
intelligence which is not to be found in any individual 
bee, animating and directing the community. The drones 
which consent to die, when the consort of the queen is 
selected, the queen, who is merely the mother of the hive, 
soaring to heaven in a brief inspiration of nuptial rapture, 
and returning to deposit the ova of a new generation, 
the guardian soldiers of the gate, and the busy traffickers 
of the pollen and the honey, are all individually unin- 
telligent, stupid, like living automata. Those skilful 
builders of the cells have not the sense to overcome the 
slightest unaccustomed obstacle. Those provident 
storers of the food for a new generation betray no sense 
of relation to one another : — 

" Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis, apes." 

In a word, nothing is more certain than the intelli- 
gence of the hive, than the unintelligence of the bees. 
Where, then, resides that intelligence which makes the 
little commonwealth a marvel and a mystery to our less 
skilful minds ? In Nature, says Science. But that is 
equivalent to saying that Nature is an Intelligence whose 

40 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

wisdom, contrivance and power, are manifested even in 
the life of ephemeral insects. 

Much more significant is the life of plants, because while 
an animal or insect has something of the apparatus — 
brain and sense organs — which in ourselves is the condi- 
tion of personal activity, the vegetable world is without 
these mental organs, and is yet everywhere and always a 
scene of mental life, which amazes and delights us. Look 
at the marriage of the plants, the delicate arrangement, 
for example, by which the yucca shrub is fertilized by the 
yucca moth, a balance so finely adjusted that the plant 
could not continue without the insect, nor the insect with- 
out the moth. How childish it would be to say that 
the intelligence of the moth makes the yucca ; and how 
meaningless to say that the intelligence of the yucca pro- 
duces the moth ! But how much more absurd it would 
be to say that the whole mystical work of life and repro- 
duction is without intelligence ! One who could say that 
has not reflected on the meaning of intelligence, and is so 
far, however keen an observer, without intelligence him- 
self. No ; the Power that made the solar system, that 
relatively large machine, has made also the minute 
organic machinery and relations of insect and plant. To 
treat it as unintelligent, as less intelligent than we are 
ourselves, is highly irrational. 

One other illustration must suffice ; where the sundew 
or the pinguicula found itself growing in soil of the 
bog and the peat which did not suffice for its nutriment, 
it developed a faculty which must fill other plants with 
astonishment. It furnished its fat leaves with filaments 
and a viscous fluid which could trap the insects that 

4i 



My Belief 

settled upon them, and it learnt to roll up the bodies 
and to dissolve and absorb them as food. It is altogether 
as marvellous and intelligent a process as the action of 
our highborn sportsmen on the moors or our less distin- 
guished butchers in the shambles. Here is a sensitive 
and adaptive intelligence at work, which is yet in the plant 
itself unconscious. If our mind, more developed than 
the vital functions of the drosera, can recognise the intel- 
ligent purpose in which it takes its automatic part, we 
must at the same time be able at least to conjecture the 
Mind which is at work not in the plant only, but in 
ourselves, the supreme, creative, purposive, overruling 
Intelligence which is responsible for the cosmos. 

We are undeveloped, ill-educated, or atrophied and 
debased, unless we are, like Job, smitten with reverence, 
awe and adoration before the Mind in Nature. 

There is a second fact about the Creative Power, 
which may be certainly known, and with the growing 
aesthetic faculty of the race, it must become increas- 
ingly impressive. That Power must love beauty, for 
the most ubiquitous fact of the universe, as it appeals 
to our senses, is that it is all beautiful. Beauty is not 
the accident of a particular thing, or a temporary con- 
dition. But the galaxy in the sky at night, the sky 
itself by night or day, the whole earth and the multi- 
tudinous seas, the coming of the dawn, the colours of 
the sunset, the forms of vegetable life, the forms of 
animal life, the very dust of the earth, the coal 
measures, the chalk cliffs, the primeval rocks, every- 
thing everywhere is steeped in the magic of beauty. 
Beautiful are the woods when they burgeon in spring, 

42 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

but beautiful are they when they wane ; still beautiful 
when they are 

•' Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang," 

or when they are silvered with frost, and covered with 
the* white mantle of snow. 

Beautiful is the world which by its minuteness evades 
the eye of man. Peer into it through the microscope, 
and you find that the minute particle of dust, or the 
filmy wing of the tiniest insect, is beautiful and perfect 
as the starry sky or as the flower-pranked meadows of 
the spring. 

When St. Paul argued from the visible things the 
everlasting divinity and power of the maker, he spoke 
as a Hebrew. If a Greek had written the passage, he 
might have inferred with equal justice " even his sub- 
lime intelligence and unfailing aesthetic sense." But it 
is not only much to know about the Power that made 
the universe, it is a cause of reverence and love, that 
the love of beauty is a formal and motive principle 
within it. 

I saw some time ago the gallery of Holman Hunt's 
pictures. I do not know him. But after studying " The 
Lady of Shalott," " The Shadow of the Cross," " The 
Finding of Jesus in the Temple," and, above all, that 
masterpiece, the portrait of himself, I might with some 
justice say that I do know him. As the painter of these 
pictures, as the brain teeming with these ideas of truth 
and beauty, as the face which he shows to the public 
in his portrait, he is more familiar to me than many 
people whom I meet. But the universe as we study it 
is a great picture gallery of masterpieces, a moving 

43 



My Belief 

panorama of truth and beauty, in which the breadth 
surpasses that of Paul Veronese, and the minute detail 
defies the Pre-Raphaelites. The Artist can be sur- 
mised, and even known to the observer. And if in that 
gallery is found a picture, His own self-portraiture, 
the image of the Invisible, the brightness of His glory, 
and the expression of His substance, we may have ground 
for saying that we know, or can know, Him better 
than we know our fellow-man or even ourselves. 

But, thirdly, there is a revelation of God in the course 
of human history, which enjoins on every thoughtful 
observer the duty of learning and understanding the 
moral or eschatological purpose that works in men's 
affairs. When the student of history examines the 
course and connections of events, he cannot resist the 
conclusion that there is an intelligible movement in 
it. The medieval philosopher was apt to think that 
history is a series of cycles, each returning to the point 
from which it began. But the modern mind is sure 
that there is a progress in it all. We never return to 
the same point, except in the sense that the ascent is 
spiral. Whatever doubt there may be about a given 
philosophy of history, we all agree that there is a philo- 
sophy in it. There is a development as independent of 
the individual's design as the life of the hive is indepen- 
dent of the purpose of the bee. Perhaps at bottom we 
are all agreed that the progress of civilization, the rise 
and fall of races, the growth of institutions, the arts, 
the sciences, and the ranges of intellectual life, are 
determined by a principle which is essentially moral. 
Emerson said that organised Nature has a destiny, 

44 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

and that is amelioration. Who can tell its limits ? We 
are leaving behind the past to enter on a better future. 
The ape and tiger within us gradually but surely die. 
Man is in the course of appearing. 

But if the principle of history is moral, it is directed 
by a Being that is personal. Morality has no meaning 
apart from will and choice and purpose. To read the 
purpose of history, the moral of human affairs, is the 
underlying motive for all historical research, and 
scientific handling of historical materials. 

The histories of the Bible palpably aim at this one 

end. Compact and brief, they are written by prophets 

to show God at work in human affairs, choosing His 

agents, punishing and rewarding, with the end in view, 

and controlling the course of things which is far beyond 

the power of any individual. The history of England 

is in its way just as impressive as that of Israel. There 

is a recognisable progress in it. The people has a 

destiny. The whole course of development is intensely 

moral and religious. The idea of duty is dominant. 

The story seems written to illustrate it : 

" Not once, nor twice, in this rough island story, 
The path of duty was the way to glory." 

I am always surprised that this Bible of our own race 
is not more intelligently taught to English children. I 
opened a page at random, in order to test the principle. 
I lighted on the story of Henry V. who went over to 
conquer France, on the pretext, a daring and impudent 
pretext, that he had a title to the crown. He besieged 
Rouen, and the citizens, driven out of its gates, were 
left to perish between the wall and his lines. Surely 

45 



My Belief 

justice slept ! And when he passed on to Agincourt, 
and the archers who there drew their " sounding bows " 
earned for themselves eternal fame, the reader might 
conclude that God was not, or did not observe the deeds 
of men. But wait ! Within a few weeks of Agincourt 
Henry V. was smitten down with disease, and died in 
the full tide of his unfruitful victories. On the next 
page the lesson is repeated. The Duke of Bedford 
captured Joan of Arc, the pure and inspired leader of her 
king, and the saviour of her land ; he burnt her as a witch. 
As she perished in the flames one might have said : 
" Surely justice sleeps ! " But no, read on; you find 
that from that time the crown of England lost its 
possessions in France for ever. 

Study history at any point, with the enquiry in your 
mind, What is the underlying principle, what the 
directing power? You cannot hesitate to say, There 
is amoral purpose at work ; all makes for justice ; poetic 
justice is historic justice. And even though the mind 
hesitates to define the controlling Power, and shrinks 
from the name " God," it virtually admits that the Power 
is moral, " a stream of tendency, not ourselves, which 
makes for righteousness." And so Hecuba, in the 
" Troades " of Euripides, an agnostic as far as the gods 
of Hellas were concerned, exclaims : 

" Thou deep base of the world, and thou, high Throne 
Above the World, Whoe'er thou art, unknown 
And hard of surmise, Chain of things that be, 
Or Reason of our reason, God, to Thee 
I lift my praise, seeing the silent road 
That bringeth justice ere the way be trod 
To all that breathes and dies." 

4 6 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

This principle and power at work in history is not 
ourselves, it is not expressed or realised by any indi- 
vidual. It is intrinsic, as a Conscience, in the long 
progression of the generations, a guiding thought 
which runs through human action, as evolution runs 
through the organic world. " Shall not the Judge of 
all the earth do right ? " asks the Bible. We might 
ask, " Shall not the justice which works through 
history be God ? " 

But there is another line of reflection and observa- 
tion. We are bound to infer the nature of God from 
human nature. Herbert Spencer is on this point very 
suggestive, though he does not see how his suggestion 
modifies his doctrine of God as the Unknown and the 
Unknowable. " The power manifested throughout the 
Universe," he says, " as material is the same power 
which in ourselves wells up in the form of conscious- 
ness." But clearly we know the Power best in 
consciousness, and if it manifests itself in me as 
consciousness, that is the surest evidence I can have 
that it is consciousness. When I take into account 
what consciousness in me means, the sense of personal 
identity, the power to will, the distinction between right 
and wrong, and the sense of obligation to do right, the 
capacity for strong feeling, and the distinction between 
feelings, with the apprehension that the one set — fear, 
cruelty, lust, pride, egotism — are wrong, and the other 
set — unselfishness, humility, purity, courage, and love — 
are right, I am at once impressed with the conviction 
that this consciousness in me existed in the Power that 
produced me. If I am led to believe that I am the 

47 



My Belief 



ultimate product of an evolutionary process, I am 
impelled to the belief that the Power which initiated 
and directed the Process, contained within itself the 
result. And if I am one of myriads of co-existent or 
successive consciousnesses, I conclude that the Power 
was an infinite Consciousness, containing within itself 
from the beginning the Will, the moral distinctions, 
the feelings, the thought, which appear divided and 
immature in the myriad finite consciousnesses of which 
I am one. Herbert Spencer hesitated to call the Power 
personal because personality to us implies a limitation. 
The absolute cannot be brought into a common desig- 
nation with the conditioned, the infinite with the finite. 
Personality means for us an individual consciousness 
among many. In that sense it seems derogatory to 
call God personal. But Herbert Spencer's objection 
has been taken as suggesting that God is something 
less than personality, whereas it means that He is 
something infinitely more. The faculties that com- 
pose my consciousness are capable of being carried out 
to infinity, though I may not have the mental power 
to conceive or to state the result. Clearly there can be a 
Will which is omnipotent, the maker of the finite wills 
which are restricted by its omnipotence ; clearly there 
can be a Moral Being which is absolutely good, the 
norm and authority of our own wavering and struggling 
moral natures ; clearly there can be a mind of capacity 
to conceive, control and produce what exists, a love which 
is the motive or spring of all love in creatures, supreme 
and ultimately triumphant in the process of things. 
And if such a Being is conceivable, a moral, thinking, 

4 8 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

holy, all-powerful Will, reflection on our own conscious- 
ness convinces us that such a Being is, and that all the 
efforts to name or to picture God have been instinctive 
feeling after that primordial and ultimate reality. 

One other line of thought remains to be noticed. It 
is very curious that Herbert Spencer has failed to notice 
it. But the omission is repaired by the psychology of 
the present day, in such writers as Starbuck and 
Professor William James. Our attention is turned to 
the variety of religious experiences. The witness of 
the inner life is collected. Unless all human testimony 
is to be rejected, men, multitudes of men, have had 
revelations of God to consciousness, which have left 
them convinced and have given them some power to 
convince others. The facts of religious experience are 
as real and important a field of enquiry as any of those 
which Herbert Spencer so diligently ransacked. It has 
been the custom, not only of scientists and philosophers, 
but even of theologians, as, for example, the Ritschlians, 
to discredit a large part of these experiences by describing 
them as mysticism. But it is not enough to discredit a 
fact to say that it is mystical. There may be a sane 
or an insane mysticism, a mysticism which violates 
reason, or one which is the highest expression and 
justification of reason. Let us leave aside the question- 
able name and idea of mysticism, and look simply at 
the facts. 

There is a way of knowing God, direct and intuitive, 
in the lines of ethical obedience. When with all my 
heart I seek to obey the highest law I know, the moral 
effort issues in a spiritual vision. The pure in heart 

49 d 



My Belief 

see God. In all the history of men and beliefs evidence 
appears that individuals have had this experience. In 
the Vedas, in Plato, in all the literature of the inner 
life the fact is manifested. But look at the Psalter ; it 
is accessible to all ; its evidence is therefore more useful 
than recondite allusions. The Psalms are very plainly 
sincere; no one can suspect the writers of posing, or of 
mere poetising. Everywhere in the book a conversation 
is going on between the soul and God. What can be 
surer than God is to these writers ? What can be 
truer than the image of God which is reflected in 
the mirror of their breasts ? Sometimes the surface is 
ruffled with passion and the image is distorted ; but 
frequently the waters are calm and the Face appears 
in the tranquil depths. There is the Good Shepherd, 
leading the soul in green pastures and by still waters, 
safe in the valley of the shadow of death, or in presence 
of the foe, anointed and satisfied, fearing no evil, 
assured of eternal good. 

In some ways, viz., for the width and inclusiveness of 
the spiritual experience, the Psalter remains inimitable. 
But the face of God is clearer, and the communion 
with Him is surer in Christianity. Examine the New 
Testament, and the writings supplementary to the New 
Testament, like Augustine's Confessions, and the devo- 
tional literature of the Church, down to our own day ; 
this experience is mediated by the faith in Christ, " the 
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the 
face" of that historic person. 

You look into the soul of Jesus. There is no pertur- 
bation on that tranquil mirror. Reflected there is God, 

50 



Is Religion Necessary? 

a good shepherd, a physician, a holy and yet pitiful 
heart, a will and a power to redeem, a love that will not 
let us go. 

In speaking of the gallery of Mr. Holman Hunt's 
pictures I said that the masterpiece was his own self- 
portraiture, and by it I felt that I knew him. In the 
immense variety of the religious experiences of mankind, 
the beautiful souls, whose being and activity have made 
the religions of the world, the inner life of Jesus stands 
out as the self-portraiture of God. If, in the vast 
gallery of existence through which we are at liberty to 
range, observing and musing, we not only find evidences 
of Intelligence, Beauty, Moral Purpose, and Love, as 
the underlying principles of all that is, but among souls 
which have lived the human life, and shared our 
struggles and aspirations, we light upon One who 
seems to us, and admits that He is, the deliberate 
self-revelation of God, it becomes quite misleading to 
say that God is unknown, or at least that He is unknow- 
able. By some He is, and by all He may be, known. 

Now let us sum up the discussion. We ask, Is 
religion necessary ? We find that while there are 
innumerable men who have a jejune and perverted 
religion, a religion which has no relation to truth or 
goodness or progress, everyone in possession of human 
faculties has and must have a religion, must have some 
notion of the Power which produces us, must stand in 
some relation to it, and must order life in accordance 
with the idea. 

But we have seen that apart from all positive religions, 
or definite dogmas, when the mind begins seriously to 

51 D 2 



My Belief 

enquire, What is the Power which alone is great ? and 
a necessity, practical and theoretical, is laid upon us to 
make such enquiry as we are able, the answer which 
comes back to our question is surer and more definite 
than we expected. What was once called Natural 
Religion, as opposed to Revealed Religion, is quite as 
authoritative, though increasing knowledge and thought 
have altered its replies, as it was to our fathers. If a 
man starts out, unbiassed, to seek for an answer to the 
question, with the world, and history, and his own mind, 
as the field of his search, he will become increasingly 
sure that the Power which made the world and him is 
an intelligent Being, that is to say, a person in whom 
lie the sources of the personality which is found in the 
enquirer and in all other human beings. He will find 
himself compelled to admit that the verdicts of his own 
conscience, the expressions of his own will, the gradual 
struggle of his own passions towards the ideal which his 
better self imposes, are all the imperfect and finite 
reflections of the perfect and infinite Being that is 
responsible for the whole process of life, and for his, 
the enquirer's, existence. 

Convinced of this primal truth, which, though prob- 
ably vague at first, may be crystallized in the formula 
" that God is, that spirit with Spirit may meet, and 
that in the right relation to God well-being consists," 
he will be eager to know the best and truest experiences 
of mankind, and to learn the religious truths or 
practices which bring him into the best relation with 
God. He will be well advised to examine the positive 
religions. Sacred is the experience of mankind. He 

52 



Is Religion Necessary ? 

will not lightly dismiss what has been tried and 
tested by many generations. The vague Theism which 
he has derived from Natural Religion obviously impels 
one to expect something more. For if God is the One 
Power, in the likeness of which we are made, the 
consciousness which wells up in our finite and individual 
consciousness, we cannot but believe that He can and 
will make Himself plain, if not to satisfy all speculative 
aspirations, at least to direct all practical conduct. 

From this point of view the question lies open before 
us : Is there a truth of God, which, plain and con- 
vincing to conscience and reason, and working to 
produce the best and highest type of man, and the 
greatest conceivable good of mankind, may be accepted 
as a self-attested revelation of God ? 

Books suggested : " Theism," by Professor Flint (W. Blackwood & 
Sons). " Thoughts on Religion," G. J. Romanes (Longmans & Co.). 
" Selections from the Literature of Theism," Caldecott and Mackintosh 
(T. & T. Clark). 



53 



Ill 

IS CHRISTIANITY THE BEST RELIGION? 

The study of comparative religion is very modern. As 
far as this country is concerned it began with Professor 
Max Miiller. The religions of the world were examined 
side by side ; their common elements were discovered ; 
the distinctive features of each were determined. 

The new knowledge, as usually happens, was a trial 
to faith. We were brought up to believe that our own 
religion was true, and the rest were false, or, in other 
words, that ours is religion and the others are not. 
When, therefore, our horizon widened, and scholars 
with the enthusiasm perhaps of discoverers exalted the 
other religions of the world at the expense of their 
own, our dogmatic position was shaken, and a period 
of doubt supervened. We saw that all religions are in 
a sense true, and yet as none was wholly true we were 
inclined to conclude that neither was our own. 

The study produced a mild latitudinarianism, an 
inclination to believe that different religions might suit 
different races, and if for the time Christianity suited us, 
in the future a better religion might be found. 

Perhaps it was felt more than ever that man must 
have a religion. What can be more impressive than to 
realise that the varied races and the scattered families 
of mankind, from the cultured Japanese down to the 

54 



Is Christianity the best Religion ? 

bushmen of Australia, all have their conceptions of the 
Unseen Power, and all seek to enter into relations with 
it, and pursue a course of conduct in harmony with the 
conception. " Religion will die, if men can be happy 
without it," says Professor Gwatkin. The study of 
comparative religion shows that religion, multifarious 
as it may be in its forms, does not die, and men cannot 
be happy without it. Perhaps the most irreligious people 
in the world are to be found in England. I remember 
a missionary returning from India and becoming the 
minister of a church in London, who told me his horror, 
after living among a religious people like the Hindoos, 
to find himself among a people without religion in 
London. The proletariat of an English city, and the 
self-indulgent classes at the top of our own social scale, 
probably come nearer to being without religion than any 
other population in the world. And yet they have a 
religion : they have a cultus of their own. They do not 
worship in church, but their theory is that they worship 
as well at home or in the open air, in the public house, or 
on the Thames, as others do in church. Indeed, you find 
that they stay away from church because in their view 
they are better than those who go. Churchgoers are 
hypocrites; while they make no profession, and are so far 
better Christians. There are in England many anti- 
Christians, secularists, agnostics, socialists, etc., but 
there are none without a religion. Whatever their 
conception of the ultimate power may be, however dull, 
dread, or alarming, they have a conception ; they believe 
they stand in some relation to it, and act accordingly. 
Man may be defined as the religious animal. He 

55 



My Belief 

stands distinguished from the other animals by this 
unfailing differentia. Atheist or Theist or Theosophist, 
Christian, Mohammedan, Jew or Pagan, they are all 
alike in having the faculty which forces them to think 
of the Energy or Force which produced them ; they all 
of them recognise that they stand in a certain relation 
to that force, and they all of them live out their little 
day in a course of conduct which is determined by their 
creed. No man can escape his doom of being religious. 
He may have a false religion, a stupid, ignorant, debas- 
ing idea of God, an utterly revolting thought of his 
relation with Him ; his conduct may, therefore, be worse 
than that of the irreligious brutes ; but his capacity of 
degradation, villainy, brutality, rests on the fact that he 
is necessarily a religious animal. 

All this the study of comparative religion has made 
clear and settled on an inductive and scientific basis. 

But if at first the widening of the horizon disturbed 
old ideas, and loosened old convictions, the shock was 
only temporary. Clearly the comparison of religions, 
scientifically conducted, led to the enquiry, Is there a 
best, and if so, which is it ? As the range of observation 
becomes wider and the knowledge more exact, evidences 
accumulate to demonstrate two positions : on the one 
hand, all religions may be regarded as revelations, 
more or less complete ; and, on the other hand, Chris- 
tianity asserts its position in the scale as the highest 
and best revelation that mankind has received. 

We must be particular to recognise that all religions 
are revelations, or, as St. Paul puts it, that " God never 
leaves Himself without a witness " to any race or any 

56 



Is Christianity the best Religion? 

man, because, in spite of Paul's teaching and Christ's, 
this fact has been ignored, forgotten, and finally denied. 
We can no longer think of Judaism as distinguished 
from other ancient religions by the fact that it was 
revelation while they were not. It was revelation, no 
doubt, but so also was the religion of Bel-Merodach in 
Babylon, the worship of Athene or Apollo in Greece, 
the jejune cultus of ancient Rome. Each race received 
the revelation of God according to its capacity and 
willinghood. The succession of prophets in Israel dis- 
tinguished that people from its Semitic relatives. While 
the Law was part of the general Semitic tradition, as a 
comparison of the Fentateuch with the Code of Kham- 
murabi shows, and while the early conceptions of Jahweh 
in Israel as the national God are no better than the 
early ideas found in Egypt and in Greece, the prophets 
of Israel brought a purer truth, and gradually unveiled 
the Being of God, as it is left when the Old Testament 
closes. Judaism is only superior to other religions 
owing to the receptivity of these gifted men. Plato's 
religion is loftier and nobler than any single Israelite's ; 
but he stood alone among the Greeks, and succeeded 
only in founding a school, not in making a nation. 
The prophets made Israel, and Judaism as a religion 
is the best thing the world possessed before 
Christianity. 

We do not venture now to say that Christianity is 
distinguished from other religions by the fact that it is 
revelation and they are not. As the Christian docu- 
ments assert, God had of old times spoken unto the 
fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers 

57 



My Belief 

manners ; and the speaking by a Son was only the con- 
summation of what had gone before. 1 It was the thought 
of Christian teachers like Paul and John, that Christi- 
anity was everywhere latent in the conscience and the 
moral law of mankind. Christ, though invisible and 
unknown, was lighting every man that comes into the 
world. Christianity therefore presents itself, not as the 
only revelation, the only religious truth, standing out 
among superstitious and godless priestcrafts, but as the 
completing truth which could gather together in one 
the children of God who were scattered abroad, the 
flower of truth which is breaking into bud wherever 
men are found. 

We approach the religions of the world now, in a 
new spirit. We never dream of saying that heathenism 
is without God. We recognise that Confucianism or 
Buddhism, though essentially atheistic, contains a great 
deal of revelation, which assuredly came from God. 
Even the most primitive religious ideas manifested by 
the records of the palaeolithic age, when men offered 
gifts at the grave of their fathers, we recognise to be 
manifestations of the same spirit which appears full and 
unclouded in Christ, and through Him was transmitted 
to the Christian Church. When we are told to-day 
that two salient verses in St. John, " Out of his belly 
shall flow rivers of living water," and "it is written 
Christ shall abide for ever," are possibly taken from a 
Buddhist book, that pleases us, because we are convinced 
that Buddhism is a revelation from God, however mis- 
understood or corrupted. The God who reveals Himself 

1 HEB. 1. I. 

58 



Is Christianity the best Religion? 

in Christianity must have been seeking to reveal Himself 
also in Buddha. We are thankful when we find the 
Golden Rule, though negatively stated, in Confucius. 
That Buddha in some ways foreshadows Christ, and 
Krishna in some ways seems an echo of him, is to us not 
disturbing but reassuring. In Mohammedanism we 
search the Koran to discover whatever is good, and 
delight to magnify the grand conception of the Unity 
of God, the precepts of prayer, and certain moral 
qualities, such as temperance, which flow from the 
religion. All this is the result of the study of compara- 
tive religion. 

I may seem presumptuous in claiming to speak for all 
Christians — possibly many will regard me as wrong or 
heretical — but I venture on the bold assertion that the 
truth implied and taught in the New Testament has 
come into clear relief and recognition as the result of the 
studies in religion which have made the last fifty years 
a new era in religious thought; and that now all 
thoughtful and instructed Christians believe in the 
universality of religion. It is an accepted axiom that 
all men have a religion, and that all religions are from 
God. Men by their very nature are feeling after God 
if haply they may find Him. The efforts to find Him 
are more or less successful ; in many cases there seems 
to be an incapacity to reach any noble or pure concep- 
tion of Him ; but as the sun shines in the heaven for 
all mankind, as the beauty of the earth and sky is spread 
before every eye that sees, so the Father, who makes 
His sun to shine alike on the evil and the good, is 
pressing in upon men everywhere and always showing 

59 



My Belief 

them all of Himself that they have the capacity or will 
to see. If Christianity brings men to a truer, nobler, 
more saving knowledge of God, than any other systems, 
that does not discredit or depreciate the rest. If some 
other view or system could show us a truer, nobler, 
more saving view of God, it would not depreciate, 
though it might supersede Christianity. 

No Christian with the modern temper would venture 
to say that Christianity is the final revelation, or to 
refuse truth which would surpass Christian truth. All 
that he would say is this, that Christianity is the best 
we know. 

Our enquiry therefore takes this form : Are we, in 
view of the religions of the world, justified in accepting 
Christianity as the best ? Regarded intrinsically, is its 
truth the purest and the highest we can attain, or, 
regarded extrinsically, has it wrought better for those 
who accepted it than any other religious system or 
view has wrought for its adherents ? 

It may be worth noting at the outset, that the founder 
of the study of Comparative Religion, the late Professor 
Max Miiller, was himself a Christian, and his faith 
deepened as he gave to the world the religious books 
of the East. It was shortly after his early study and 
mastery of the Rig-Veda, that he wrote to Chevalier 
Bunsen that he would like to go to India, and live 
there for ten years quietly, trying not only to learn the 
language but to make friends, and "then see," he goes 
on, " whether I was fit to take part in a work by means 
of which the old mischief of Indian priestcraft could 
be overthrown and the way opened for the entrance of 

60 



Is Christianity the best Religion ? 

simple Christian teaching, that entrance which this teaching 
finds into every human heart which is freed from the enslaving 
powers of priests and from the obscuring influence of 
philosophers. Nowhere could the vital power of 
Christianity more gloriously realise itself, than if the 
world saw it spring up there for a second time, in a 
very different form from that in the West, but still 
essentially the same." l 

In the words which I have italicised the founder of 
the new science recognises that Christianity must be 
distinguished from the forms, the systems, the churches, 
in which it has from age to age embodied itself. If 
the Christian religion, for example, were identified with 
the Coptic Church in Egypt, the observer might well 
hesitate between the religion represented by the 
ancient building in old Cairo and that represented by 
the splendid mosque on the Citadel. If Christianity 
were identified with the Orthodox Church, one might 
wonder, looking on Russia and Japan, whether the 
Buddhism of the strong young country were not better 
than the icon-worship and intellectual stagnation of the 
Czar's dominions. And still more, if the Roman claim is 
to be allowed, if John XXIII., Alex. VI., Julius II., were 
the divinely-appointed vicegerents of God on the earth, 
if the corruption and cruelty and obscurantism of the 
Curia were the expression of the Holy Spirit's work, if 
the sordid superstitions, the confessional, the pantheon 
of Virgin and saints, the degraded priesthood, and 
the blind dogmatism, which characterise modern 
Romanism, were to be identified with Christianity, no 
i «« Professor Max Muller," vol. i., p. 182. 
6l 



My Belief 

thoughtful man would venture to assert the supremacy 
of that religion. As the weary nations, France and 
Italy, with untold labour shake themselves free from 
the destroying tyranny, escaping ruined and degraded 
from the yoke, they are in no mood to accept a 
Christianity which, in their eyes, is Catholicism. 

But every student is aware that the Christian religion 
is not identified with the churches : the churches have 
sometimes cherished, and sometimes destroyed it ; and 
at the present day the simple Christian teaching, which 
finds its ready entrance into every unprejudiced human 
heart, the teaching of the New Testament itself, detaches 
itself from the corrupt historical systems, and insists on 
being judged by the light of its inherent truth. 

But let us proceed. When we attempt to arrange 
the pre-Christian religions in an order of truth and 
value, there can be little hesitation in placing Judaism 
at the top. " Considered as a revelation or discovery 
of God," writes Professor Gwatkin, 1 " it is much the 
highest. No other lays down with equal clearness at 
once the unity of God as against the polytheism of the 
civilized world, his personality as against the pantheism 
of superior people, his holiness as against the debasing 
conceptions of men who thought him like themselves, 
and his goodness, as against the bbdings of conscience 
wherever it was awake." 

In Judaism mankind reached the idea of God as an 

all-powerful, holy Being, who is set on the holiness, the 

salvation, of man. That idea of God is not clear in all 

the Old Testament writings, but it is the resultant 

"The Knowledge of God," ii. 44. 

62 



Is Christianity the best Religion? 

product of them. The people were trained, the pro- 
phets were sent, events were disposed, to realise this 
revelation of God. Thus the idea of God derived from 
the Old Testament as a whole is as lofty, in some 
respects, as the human mind can conceive. To 
complete it only a few points were needed. It was 
necessary to conceive that God is holy love, not only 
to one favoured nation, Israel, but to mankind. It was 
necessary to interpret the goodness which He demands, 
not as an external conformity to an arbitrary standard, 
but as an inner harmony with His own will and goodness. 
And it was necessary to open a new and living way, by 
which men could be transformed into the Divine image, 
and come into harmony with the Divine will. 

The Old Testament religion, in a word, was the best 
the world had seen, but it waited to be made universal, 
inward, and redemptive. 

Christianity, not the churches or the Church, but 
the religious truth presented in the teaching of Jesus, 
and then in the apostolic teaching about Jesus, com- 
pleted the old religion by precisely the additions which 
were lacking. If we avoid for the moment technical 
terms, and endeavour to look at Christianity as a new 
phenomenon supervening on an ancient old-world 
system, we can single out the distinctive characteristics 
of the religion : Christianity was Judaism ; salvation 
was of the Jews, says the Fourth Gospel ; Jesus had 
not come to destroy, but to fulfil the Law. To 
the thought of Jesus He was Himself the inevitable 
outcome of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. 1 

1 LUKE XXiv. 44. 

63 



My Belief 

But Christianity was Judaism universalized. Now 
for the Jew stood Man. God so loved the 
World. The message was immediately to be world- 
wide. 

Again, Christianity was a Judaism which discounted 
the external and ceremonial side of religion, laying the 
whole stress on the inward life, the state of the 
heart ; the important things in the Law, as now inter- 
preted, are judgment, mercy, faith and the love of 
God. 

But the most distinctive addition which Chris- 
tianity makes to Judaism is in the person of Christ 
Himself. 

Mr. Lecky in a familiar passage dwells on the debt 
which Christianity owes to the character of its 
Founder. If only Christianity were Jesus and nothing 
else, the world would readily accept it. For the 
attraction of Jesus is irresistible. The life of benefi- 
cence, the mingled holiness and love, the mercy to the 
weak and the sinful, the courageous rebuke of pride 
and hypocrisy, the fearless facing of death ; the words 
He spoke, and the ideas which He gave to mankind, of 
God and His kingdom, of God's thought for men, and 
of men's duty to God ; the mysterious struggle and 
sacrifice of His death on the Cross ; the certainty that 
He rose again, and was, as He said He would be, 
among His people for ever in the Spirit : all this rivets 
and holds the hearts of men. 

According to the New Testament, Jesus is Chris- 
tianity. To believe in Him, to love Him, to serve 
Him, to follow Him, to live for Him and even to 

6 4 



Is Christianity the best Religion? 

die for Him if necessary, is the whole duty of the 
Christian. 

Thus Christianity, taken simply, and in its original 
intent, commends itself to every man's conscience in 
the sight of God. 

A philosopher like Hegel will offer a philosophical 
defence of this superiority. He classifies religions accord- 
ing to the value assigned to the individual. In " religions 
of mass," as he calls them, the individual is lost in the 
society; in "religions of individuality," society exists 
for the individual ; while Christianity as the one religion 
of Spirit proclaims at once the supreme value of the 
individual, and the need of the society to bring him to 
perfection. 1 But the philosophical defence is an after- 
thought, an interpretation. The remarkable thing about 
Christianity is that it is a fact, a Person appearing in 
history, a Person whose portrait of outer activity 
and inner life survives, whose ideas are impressed on 
His followers, who continues to live and work in the 
hearts of all who believe. Thus the religion is at 
all times to be judged by the fact of Christ. That 
impression of concrete fact determines its place in the 
thought of mankind. A philosophy of the Christian 
religion may please and reassure thinkers. Such a 
philosophy, for instance, as is given in Principal Fair- 
bairn's book bearing that name, may confirm believers 
and answer doubters. But the philosophy grows out 
of the fact ; the fact produces its effect on the minds of 
men irrespective of the philosophy. 

Is, then, the fact of Christ the best we know in 
1 Gwatkin : " The Knowledge of God," i. 255. 

65 E 



My Belief 

religion ? is it the most living and the most fruitful seed 
of religious truth in the world ? 

It may seem almost superfluous to institute a detailed 
comparison between Christianity and the other positive 
religions, which are presented to us by the study of 
comparative religion. For, whatever may be said by 
way of argument in justification of these religions, 
people brought up in Christendom have never, except 
in the most isolated instances, or in a state of exceptional 
degradation, embraced these rival systems. If the early 
Caliphs swept away the corrupt Christianity of Asia 
Minor, Egypt, Africa, and even of Constantinople, and 
many may have perverted in order to save their in- 
glorious life, no European would submit to the Sultan 
to-day. The most unchristian Anglo-Indian would 
never dream of becoming a Moslem. Or, if the late 
Sir Edwin Arnold idealised Buddha in " The Light of 
Asia," it was with no thought of becoming a Buddhist. 
On the contrary, he presently sang with greater fervour, 
though with less poetic success, " The Light of the 
World." Mr. Lafcadio Hearn apparently became a 
Buddhist in Japan, but the Buddhists treated him ill, and 
he would seem to have sickened of the thing before he 
died, if we may judge from the later letters in the Life. 
I have not heard of any Englishman becoming a Hindoo ; 
though the lady who wrote " The Web of Indian Life " 
speaks almost as a convert, and Mrs. Annie Besant is 
so far a Hindoo that she is a great and successful 
reformer of that religion. But these occasional eccen- 
tricities do not alter the general position. There is no 
likelihood of modern Christendom exchanging the Cross 

66 



Is Christianity the best Religion ? 

for the Crescent ; Englishmen will never as a body 
become Buddhists or Hindoos. When we shake off 
Christianity we repudiate all positive religion ; we 
admit that it is the best of the positive religions, but 
we pass on to a Theosophy or to a systematised religious 
Agnosticism. 

And yet, for completeness' sake, before comparing 
Christianity with these negative positions, it may be 
well to sketch the contrast of this positive religion 
with the others which contest, or have contested, its 
supremacy. 

Let us take for a moment the religion which, outside 
of Christianity, is presumably the best, because it sprang 
into being six centuries later, and the remarkable man 
who founded it believed that he was sent to complete 
the previous revelation. Nothing is more marked in 
Mahomet than his reverence for Jesus, and his regard 
for " the people of the book," unless it be his conviction 
that he himself has a later revelation which can correct 
the older, and his determination that all, even Christians, 
should acknowledge his claim. But can it be seriously 
claimed for Mahomet that he was better than Jesus, or 
that he carried religion farther or higher ? 

Read the Koran side by side with the Bible, and the 
contention melts into thin air. Clearly Mahomet did 
not know the Bible ; he tells the story of the patriarchs, 
and refers to the life of Jesus in a way which shows 
that he depended on traditions, perverted and corrupted, 
for all his information on Judaism and Christianity. 
The stories which have replicas in the Bible are uni- 
formly inferior. And yet, when we come to ask, What 

67 E 2 



My Belief 

truth did Mahomet teach which is not in the Bible ? 
we are sorely put to it for an answer. There is the 
conception of God as Life and Knowledge, Power and 
Will, and there is the eternal insistence on His unity. 
But these things are in the Bible with a clearer evidence 
and a more passionate conviction ; while the two primal 
qualities of God which give to the Bible its distinction, 
goodness and love, are wanting in the Koran. The 
prophet of the Arabian desert has no such vision of 
holiness as came to Isaiah : still less has he the vision 
of love which came to Jesus. Allah is not ethical ; he 
is an arbitrary despot. His will is law, and things are 
right because he wills them. The Christian conception 
is far higher : God wills them because they are right. 
Allah is merciful ; but a mercy which is not ethical is 
only the encouragement of evil. In the Bible the 
mercy of God leads to repentance ; in the Koran it leads 
to indulgence. In the Koran there is no such thing as 
repentance and new birth ; there is no redemption. 
By acknowledging Allah and Mahomet, and by the 
observance of the prayers and the fast, the Moslem is 
assured of Paradise, the garden with the rivers running 
through it, and the black-eyed damsels for delight. 
You reach Paradise, not because you are good, but 
because you recognise Allah and Mahomet. But the 
most serious defect is that, while the Koran is the com- 
plete and final revelation, which may not be transgressed 
or superseded or supplemented, the political regulations 
there laid down are an effective barrier to progress, 
or even to social stability. The Turkish Empire is 
the exact reflex of the book. Once in the ninth 

68 



Is Christianity the best Religion? 

century a noble effort was made by a pious Mullah 
to reform Islam, but it completely failed. The infallible 
Book stands in the way. In the early days of fresh 
enthusiasm when the Arabs issued from their desert with 
the sword and the Koran, and even up to the great 
period of the Saracens, the Book worked with a certain 
intrinsic energy, which it certainly possesses. Among 
lower races, and in face of a corrupted Christianity, 
it had a stimulating and purifying effect. Saladin 
scattered at Hattin the faithless chivalry of Latin 
Europe, and his own chivalrous character is compared 
favourably with the best of the kings and captains whom 
the West sent to meet him. But the victory of Islam 
has involved Syria and Egypt, Asia Minor and Turkish 
Europe, in a ruin, stagnation and decay, which seem 
now to defy restoration or even reform. 

The candid student of religions and of governments can 
hardly hesitate in his decision. There is a radical flaw 
in the later religion. Allah is merciful, it says, and 
sees that Jesus asked too much of men, and told them 
too little of Paradise ; it commands men to come down 
from a higher level of morality to a lower. The 
Mohammedan world is picturesque, interesting. 
Everywhere are the noble mosques ; everywhere are 
the traces of the Arabian culture, the art and the 
learning. But everywhere the trend is downwards ; 
justice is impossible; women are degraded; lust is 
sanctioned ; and love dies. 

The late Mrs. Bishop (" Isabella Bird") writes from 
Persia : " I have been learning for some months past 
the utter error of Canon Taylor's estimate of Islam. 

6 9 



My Belief 

I think it the most blighting, withering, degrading 
influence of any of the false creeds. . . . And if there 
is a more venal, devastating and diabolical oppression 
on earth than that of the Turk, it is that of the Shah. 
This is a ruined, played-out country, perishing for want 
of people, of water, of fuel, and above all for want of 
security ; crushed by the most grinding exactions, to 
which there is no limit but the total ruin of those on 
whom they press ; without a middle class, and without 
hope." 1 

The great traveller, whose interest in Christian 
missions was created entirely by her discovery of the 
misery of the Christless world, was not astonished when 
a Persian, to whom she had been speaking about Christ, 
said " Christ is the hakim (doctor) for us ! " It is very 
noticeable, that directly a Mohammedan is induced to 
read the Bible, and comes to know Christ, that kind 
of exclamation follows. Christ is the doctor the 
Mohammedan world needs, the political security, the 
elementary justice, the practical compassion, for want 
of which Moslems are decaying, cannot be derived 
from the Koran. Christian civilisation, the product of 
the Christian faith, is necessary, indispensable. 

The contrast between the two religions may be given 
in one remark made by a strict Mohammedan in 
Palestine. He was reading the Bible, and justified it 
to another Moslem by saying, "I have never found 
anything which scours sin from my heart as this does." 
There is no tendency in the Koran to scour sin from 
the heart ; at the best it scours sin from the outside. 
1 "Life of Mrs. Bishop," by Anna M. Stoddart, p. 222. 

70 



Is Christianity the best Religion ? 

But it will hardly be questioned that the habitual and 
systematic reading of the Bible has this tendency, 
carries the reader on to the desire of holiness, to the 
search for it, to the discovery of it at the Cross of Jesus 
where sin is washed away. 

Let us turn for a moment now to Buddhism, which 
until recently numbered more adherents than any other 
religion. Only in the last decade of the nineteenth 
century did Christendom rise to 500,000,000, and so 
overtop the presumable adherents of Buddha. A few 
words from Mrs. Bishop's graphic pen may set the 
reader on the right line of enquiry. " Several of the 
Asiatic faiths, and notably Buddhism, started with noble 
conceptions and with a morality far in advance of their 
age. But the good has been mainly lost out of them in 
their passage down the centuries; and Buddhism in 
China is now much on a level with the idolatries of 
barbarous nations. There is nothing to arrest the 
further downward descent of the systems so effete yet so 
powerful and interwoven with the whole social life of the 
nation. There is no resurrection power in any of them." 1 

It is the redemptive power, the resurrective element, 
the regenerative force of Christianity, which distinguishes 
it from Buddhism. The founder of the great Asiatic 
religion suffered with the world ; Christ suffered for the 
world. Buddha sought salvation in an escape from 
consciousness, and the pursuit sterilises and destroys 
the individual soul. . But Christ places salvation in the 
rebirth of the soul, even of the most sinful, into His 
own image. His object is to make men sons of God. 

1 " Life of Mrs. Bishop," p. 237, 
71 



My Belief 



A moral ideal is presented, confessedly the highest that 
man has been able to conceive ; and a power to realise 
it is offered. 

It is, therefore, in the individual soul, in the develop- 
ment of a progressive morality, in the building up of a 
noble and complete personality that Buddhism comes 
short. Thus a Japanese Buddhist, who has embraced 
Christianity, Kauzo Uchimura, makes a discriminating 
remark : " Indeed I can say with all truthfulness that 
I saw good men only in Christendom. Brave men, 
honest men, righteous men, are not wanting in heathen- 
dom, but I doubt whether good men, by that I mean 
those men summed up in that one English word which 
has no equivalent in any other language, gentlemen, I 
doubt whether such is possible without the religion 
of Jesus Christ to mould us. The Christian, God 
Almighty's gentleman, he is a unique figure in this 
world, indescribably beautiful, noble and loveable." 1 

And that conclusion is very forcibly illustrated by the 
experience of Lafcadio Hearn. He married a Japanese, 
he renounced his Christianity, he glorified the religion, 
the superstitions, the manners, the character, of his 
adopted countrymen, only to make the bitter discovery, 
that the politeness covered heartlessness and indiffer- 
ence, and that a false idea of God leads to the loveless 
treatment of men. 

But when Christians renounce their religion, it is not 
to embrace even such ancient and powerful religions as 
Mohammedanism and Buddhism. The practical com- 
petitors of Christianity are Agnosticism and Theosophy. 

1 M Dux Christus," p. 285. 
72 



Is Christianity the best Religion ? 

What has been said in the previous chapter, is the 
answer to Agnosticism. The ignorance on which it 
rests is in unstable equilibrium. The ignoramus cannot 
pass into ignorabimus. If men are ignorant of God it 
is not because they cannot know. " The invisible 
things of him since the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being perceived through the things that are made, 
even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may 
be without excuse." * 

God is sufficiently clear in Nature and in life to elicit 
our gratitude, our reverence, our implicit surrender to 
His will. If, withholding the tribute which is due, we 
lose the vision, and " our foolish heart is darkened," 
our ignorance is our own fault. We must bear the 
responsibility. A more thorough psychology, not to 
mention a more careful study of religions, is gradually 
pushing Agnosticism out of court. An enquirer may 
profess Agnosticism in regard to many points in 
Christian dogmatics, but he cannot plead Agnosticism 
about the essentials of religion. He knows enough 
about God to worship and obey. He has Christ before 
him, and can hardly fail to recognise that there is the 
model of the right life. If he wills to do the will of 
God, he learns that the doctrine is of God. 2 Thus 
he may, if he chooses, follow on to know. His ignor- 
ance is no more defensible than ignorance of right and 
wrong, ignorance of natural facts, or ignorance of the 
law of the land. 

But while Agnosticism is a phase which passes when 
men become earnest, candid and resolute, Theosophy 

1 ROM. i. 20 2 JOHN vii. 17. 

73 



My Belief 

offers an answer to the search after truth, which may be 
said to dispute the supremacy of Christianity. It is no 
doubt a claim with which Christians must reckon. But 
the difficulty at present is to know what it is. It has 
not attained to any clear and convincing expression. 
Whether it admits Christianity or denies it, whether it 
supplements or supersedes it, we hardly know. The 
exponent of Theosophy in our own country is a sincere 
and eloquent woman, who began as a Christian, became 
an Agnostic, and is at present a Theosophist. She 
proves her own candour and truth beyond question, and 
that fact alone gives her an influence such as her 
teacher, Madame Blavatsky, could not gain in England. 
But her published writings are not convincing; they 
betray errors, which a scholar can correct, and argu- 
ments and doctrines which any thinking person can 
dispute. For my own part, the only Theosophical 
writer that convinces me is Dr. Steiner. But so far as 
I understand him, he is a Christian with a philosophical 
bent. 

Theosophy must produce its Bible before we can 
judge surely of it. At present I cannot discover any- 
thing which it has contributed to religion over and 
above the teaching of Christ and the Apostles. Its 
doctrine of the physical body, the astral body, and the 
ether-body, does not traverse Christian truth, and, 
religiously, I do not know that it is a gain. 

Theosophy offers no truth comparable with the fact 
of Christ, which has held the heart of mankind for these 
nineteen centuries. Its doctrine is esoteric and recon- 
dite. It appeals to women of a mystical and enthusiastic 

74 



Is Christianity the best Religion? 

type. It can hardly be said to have attracted the 
attention of the masses, or of men. 

The question therefore which really and practically 
faces the people of our country and of our time is this : 
Granted that we must have a religion, must form some 
idea of God, of our relation to Him, and of the life 
which should be lived, does the world offer us anything 
better than Christianity ? Is any truth more convinc- 
ing, more self-evident, than the truth of Christ ? Does 
any view of God and man lead to a nobler character, a 
richer personality, a more beneficent influence ? 

The answer I offer to the question is plain. All other 
religions, and theories of life, may be regarded with 
sympathy and with reverence ; we may well believe 
that God, who has made of one flesh and blood the 
whole family of man, is also spiritually present in man 
as such, as conscience, as religious aspiration, as moral 
effort. We hold no brief to disparage any creed or 
view, genuinely held by man. On the contrary we 
would piece all in the great tapestry of the human 
mind, and of man's experience. 

But Christianity, in its pure and uncorrupted form, 
holds its commanding place as the best, the most 
universal, the most redemptive religion, that we know. 
Its idea of God is the highest ; its ideal of man is the 
purest ; its power to redeem the individual, and to 
advance the social development of the community, is 
unequalled. Therefore on purely rational grounds we 
are bound to embrace this truth, and to obey. If the 
Moslem is true to his religion, still more ought the 
Christian to be true to his. If the Theosophist studies 

75 



My Belief 

with ardour and enthusiasm the teaching of Mahatmas, 
still more ought the Christian to ask for the Holy 
Spirit, and to search the records of the faith by that 
heavenly light. 

We are bound to be Christians, unless we can show 
something better ; for we needs must love the highest 
when we see it. 

Nothing better has yet been shown. There are views 
many, and claims many ; but none is established. 
Christ is yet Lord of Lords and King of Kings. 

Book recommended: "The Sacred Anthology," by Moncure D. 
Conway (Triibner & Co.). 



76 



IV 

THE CLAIMS OF ROME 

From the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the acces- 
sion of Queen Victoria the question of the Roman 
claims slumbered in this island. Men were Protestant 
as a matter of course. The idea that Great Britain 
would ever repudiate the Reformation was as incon- 
ceivable as that Ireland should ever embrace it. The 
martyrs, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, had lit a 
candle in England which seemed as if it never could 
be put out. When in the Romantic movement of the 
early years of the nineteenth century Scott painted the 
Catholic Church with the rich colours of his fancy, and 
implicitly depreciated the sour Presbyterianism of his 
country, he indulged the vein just because he was con- 
vinced of the invincible Protestantism of the people. 
He would probably have hesitated to sneer at the Cove- 
nanters and to glorify Rome, if he had seen that his 
descendants would take him literally, and that Abbots- 
ford would be in the hands of Romanists at the beginning 
of the twentieth century. 

The Oxford Movement, and the amazing list of 
converts to Rome out of the English Church which 
resulted from it, 1 altered the whole national temper. 

1 " The Catholic Who's Who ? " gives an extraordinary evidence of 
the proselytising success of Rome in England. 

77 



My Belief 

The genius of Newman dazzled the imagination of 
England ; the practical zeal of Manning softened the 
heart. It is said that since the Tracts were published, 
that is in the last sixty years, fifteen hundred men of 
position, noblemen, gentry, authors, artists, lawyers, 
doctors, have gone over to Rome. Twenty-five lead- 
ing men go over to Rome per annum. Women go 
over in greater numbers. Cardinal Vaughan used to 
calculate that there were eight thousand converts 
annually. This country is covered with churches, 
convents, schools and colleges; the schools are now 
supported and maintained by public money; and 
as the teachers are largely nuns who receive no 
salary, the money granted by the State, or paid from 
the rates, goes immediately to further the Roman 
propaganda. 

But it is not the number of the converts, nor the 
variety and magnificence of the buildings, which mark 
the re-conquest of England ; but it is rather the change 
in temper and disposition. Fifty years ago the country 
regarded Popery with terror or contempt. Now she 
regards it with favour, with respect, with indulgence. 
To be a Papist is fashionable. It secures entree to 
society, and the agreeable patronage of the nobility. 
When an English Princess renounced her Protestant 
faith to marry the Spanish King there was hardly a 
protest. The Roman Church is high in social circles, 
in the Press, in the councils of government. Cardinal 
Manning used to say that the task of Rome was to 
bend the neck of an Imperial race — he meant his own 
countrymen — that task does not now seem impossible. 

7 8 



The Claims of Rome 

The Roman Curia has more power in England than it 
ever had since the days of King John ; there are more 
convents and monasteries in the country than there 
were before the Reformation. The army of possession 
has silently established itself from Land's End to John 
o' Groats. Some day will come the long premeditated 
coup. Will Rome triumph ? 

It is therefore a practical and pressing question, 
which every serious mind has to face: Is the claim 
of Rome valid ? She maintains that Catholicism is 
Christianity. Is that true? 

The Roman position is so logical and consistent that 
we are bound to accept it or reject it altogether. " Love 
me all in all, or not at all," is the motto of this Church. 
If, as Newman and Manning believed, Romanism is 
the temporal mission of the Holy Ghost, the divinely- 
appointed authority and representative of God upon 
earth, if it has in the supreme Pontiff an infallible voice 
for deciding questions of faith and practice, there is 
nothing for it but absolute and unquestioning submis- 
sion to this authority ; for that is equivalent to submis- 
sion to the will of God. But, on the other hand, if the 
Roman system is not the work of the Holy Ghost, if 
the Pope is not the vicegerent of God, if infallibility is 
not vested in his chair, if there is the slightest flaw in 
the claim, the whole system must be disastrous, ruinous 
to nations and to individuals. The effect of submission 
to it will be discernible in the decay of Catholic nations, 
and in the deterioration of individuals,who take the 
fraudulent authority as divine, and bow to it as they 
do to God. 

79 



My Belief 

Rome has so stated her position and shaped her claim 
that the issue is very plain. Either the Roman Church 
is true, the voice of God on earth, or it is a blasphemous 
delusion. The logical alternative here is Christ or 
Antichrist. 

Now for the large number of students and thinkers 
who know the history of the Latin Church, and observe 
the workings of that powerful organisation in the 
Catholic countries, Ireland, South America, Spain, 
Portugal and Belgium, one point is practically settled : 
If Catholicism is Christianity, the world must deliver 
itself from Christianity. The manhood of France and 
Italy has settled that question. The disastrous effect of 
the priesthood, and the confessional, on the woman 
and the home ; the intellectual obscurantism ; the 
scandals of the conventual system ; the interference 
of the Curia with the national government ; the 
unscrupulous intrigues, and exposed mendacity, of the 
Papal agents; the unwholesome superstitions of Lourdes 
and of New Pompeii ; the abominations of Rome and 
the immediate entourage of the holy Father; all the 
horrors and degradations which were set out by Michelet 
in his " Priests, Women and Families," and more 
recently, by the terrible realism of Zola, or by Fogazzaro 
in his pictures of modern Italy; have convinced thought- 
ful people of one thing at any rate : if this is Christ's 
intention, if the Papacy represents Him, if Catholicism 
as it is known to us in history, is the best that 
Christianity has to offer, the world which is bent on 
liberty, light and truth, must consent to let the dream 
of Christianity die. 

80 



The Claims of Rome 

Now let any one accustom himself to the atmosphere 
of the New Testament, to the Spirit of Christ, all gentle- 
ness and forbearance, forbidding His disciples to call 
down fire from heaven on those who would not receive 
Him, or to silence teachers because they followed not 
with Him, reproaching the impetuous and persecuting 
tendency of human nature by the words, " Ye know not 
what spirit ye are of " ; and then let him turn abruptly 
to the teaching of Rome on the subject of persecution. 
For instance, I have before me the words of Peter 
Marianus de Luca, Professor of the Decretals in the 
Gregorian University of Rome. He shows that the 
whole teaching of Catholicism from the first is that 
" The Church can inflict on heretics the penalty of 
death," and a fortiori all lesser penalties. The doctrine, 
incredible as it sounds to modern ears, is based on the 
words of Peter, " Lord, here are two swords." These, 
teaches the Church, are the spiritual and the material ; 
the one is to be used directly by the Church, the other 
by the State, at the nod and will of the priest. 

The Roman Church, therefore, claims the right to 
torture, burn, and kill all who will not accept her 
doctrine. And it traces this authority to Christ and to 
His Apostles ! The persecutions which have disfigured 
the history of Catholicism are not due to the wickedness 
or infirmity of the agents, but to the principles and 
teaching of the Church. Torquemada was the honoured 
and consistent servant of the Pope. The Duke of Alva 
proceeded to exterminate the heretical population of the 
Low Countries, furnished with the sword and the blessing 
of the Pope himself. The Roman Church claims to be 



My Belief 

an absolute authority over all individuals and all govern- 
ments, and to enforce her claim and teaching by the 
utmost rigours of coercion which human governments 
have devised. Her theory is to force men into her 
obedience. Her motto is that of ancient Rome: — 

" Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos." 

Professor Huxley playfully rallied George William 
Ward, the most learned and sincere of all the tractarian 
converts to Rome, on his readiness to put a stake in his 
garden and to burn his Protestant guests. But Ward 
defended his conviction, and said that he only abstained 
from putting it into practice because it was not politic, 
not because it was not right. 

Rome claims absolute submission ; she is bending 
the neck of this Imperial race ; she seriously intends, 
if she ever again gets the power, to exterminate all 
heretics. Her triumph is a threat and a terror. Her 
principles are too appalling seriously to contemplate. 

But it is said that in the modern world there is no 

danger of Rome ever exercising her right of putting 

heretics to death. Well, I have before me an article 

which appeared in France et Evangile of Jan., 1905, on 

" La Curie Romaine." The writer is M. du Belloy, who 

was present as a secretary at the Vatican Council of 

1870. He gives some account of the working of the 

Congregation of the Inquisition to-day. It employed 

in 1870 two hundred thousand agents all over the 

world, from royal princes down to domestic servants. 

But let me quote : — 

" On the morning of the second Tuesday of every month the 
president of the tribunal of the Inquisition, who is a cardinal, receives 

82 



The Claims of Rome 

from the secretary, who is always a Dominican, the correspondence of the 
preceding month. After studying it he sets aside the reports which 
contain nothing of importance, and classifies the others. In the evening 
he submits the latter to a committee of eleven Dominicans, who sit with 
him in judgment upon them, and mark their decisions by affixing one or 
other of three seals on each document, a white one for Insanity, a grey 
one for Seclusion, and a red one for Death. The tribunal is secret ; 
there are no archives." 

M. du Belloy was present at a conclave of Inquisitors 
in the Convent of Minerva. " I remained," he says, 
" two hours at no small risk, for had I been discovered 
I should never have been seen again." He tells us 
that the three seals mean that the agent is to proceed 
against the person whom he has denounced, either by 
getting the man incarcerated, or committed to an 
asylum, or assassinated. " I remember," he writes 
" the case of a statesman in Santa Fe of Bogota, whose 
daughter had become a Protestant. The unhappy 
father was sent a red seal, and was obliged to give 
effect to the sentence." Woe betide the agent who 
fails to execute an order. The red seal awaits himself. 
" I have good reason for saying," adds M. du Belloy, 
" that the Roman Inquisition at the present time is 
much more terrible than in the sixteenth, seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries when it worked for the most 
part in the light of day. Nothing escapes that tribunal. 
As Cardinal Guidi, one of its former presidents, declared, 
it is Mistress of the World." 

It should be manifest to every careful enquirer that 
in this mighty engine of spiritual despotism, worked as 
it usually is by priests, who are strangers to the soften- 
ing influences of home, castrated to be the supple 
instruments of an all-powerful central authority, we 

83 f 2 



My Belief 

have something not only different from, but alien to, 
the Christianity of the early Church. 

The contrast between the Gospels and the Epistles 
on the one hand, and Romanism at work on the 
other, is as startling as the contrast between modern 
Buddhism in China, and the character and teaching of 
Sakhyamuni. 

The most striking features of Catholicism are, the 
claim of the Pope, to autocratic power, and to infallibility 
in declaring points of faith and morals ex cathedra ; the 
exaltation of the Virgin Mary to a position of practical 
divinity ; the right of the priest to search the conscience 
in the confessional ; the belief that by the consecrating 
word of the priest the wafer becomes Christ, so that it 
must not only be eaten, but reserved and worshipped. 
But these salient features of Catholicism were all 
unknown in the times of the Apostles ; for a hundred 
years after the crucifixion there is no trace of them. 
Then the early beginnings of the Catholic system 
appear. Pagan practices are assimilated. The machine 
of Church government is developed. By slow degrees, 
which can be easily traced, the religion of the New 
Testament is developed into Catholicism ; but in its 
full development, it has lost the spirit of the original ; 
it has become like the systems of religion which Christ 
combated, and still more like that Roman Empire 
which it superseded. It is a powerful political organisa- 
tion aiming at universal dominion. The methods by 
which it seeks the end are not Christ's methods ; the 
doctrine is hardly in any respect Christ's doctrine ; the 
connection with Christianity is not spiritual at all, but 

84 



The Claims of Rome 

material, and institutional. And therefore if the world 
rejects Catholicism, it does not reject Christianity, but 
may even be returning to Christ by the rejection. If 
Catholicism has become incompatible with liberty, with 
progress, with science, with criticism, or even with 
stable government, that is no just objection to Chris- 
tianity, for Catholicism has become a danger and an 
incubus because it has deserted Christianity. There is 
no exaggeration in saying that spiritually, religiously, 
as a force in the individual life, and as the moulding 
influence of society, Christianity is the antithesis of 
Catholicism. 

It is, of course, no vindication of Protestantism to 
say that Catholicism is not Christianity, for Protes- 
tantism may have failed equally with the older and 
more powerful system. But we cannot be too explicit 
just now in maintaining that Christianity must be 
judged by Christ and the early records, and not by the 
Church or the Churches, which may easily be a travesty 
of, and a hindrance to, the religion. 

Indeed we may admit that the reaction to Catholicism 
is due to the failure of Protestantism. Weary of the 
ills we know of, English people are going back to the 
ills of Catholicism which they have almost forgotten. 

The search for truth is arduous, the sense of 
responsibility is a burden, and the temptation to yield 
to any imposing authority which will acquit one of the 
toil and the weight is obvious. " The standing cause of 
the Catholic reaction," says Professor Gwatkin, "is the 
natural man's impatience of responsibility for the use 
of reason in religion. In Rudolf Sohm's words, the 

85 



My Belief 



natural man is a born Catholic." 1 Men return to the 
Catholic fold, and have a sense of peace ; the warfare 
is accomplished; rest is reached. They do not notice, 
what is obvious to the observer, that they have sur- 
rendered ; they have not found truth, but only 
renounced the search ; they have not escaped the 
responsibility of their reason in religion, but only 
seared and crushed it. 

The Roman Church has great attractions, if once 
the sense of truth and moral responsibility is sur- 
rendered. Its long past, if one obliterates the tale of 
oppression, blindness, cruelty and greed, is imposing. 
Its ritual is a poem, or rather, it is a subtle appeal to 
all the senses, to all the man except the reason and 
the conscience. It understands all the human weak- 
nesses. It meets man in the moment of failure, and in 
the sickening sense of sin. It has a narcotic or balm 
for every pain. It does not save men from their sins, 
but saves them in their sins. Equivalents can be 
paid. Absolution is given regularly and systematically. 
Obedience to the Church, and the discharge of certain 
easily performed pieties, will save the soul, apart from 
any inward change or ethical worth. A genial casuistry 
excuses all sins, even the grossest, and robs wickedness 
of its offence if it is practised in the cause of religion. 
The strenuous pilgrim who was righting his way to the 
celestial city through temptation and difficulty, knitting 
his sinews and strengthening his soul by the conflict, is 
suddenly packed into an express train ; he can remit 
his efforts, and sit down in the corner for his paper and 

1 " The Knowledge of God," ii. 247. 

86 



The Claims of Rome 

a sleep, and a comfortable meal ; the Church will land 
him in — well, if not heaven, yet purgatory. 

The thief on the Cross heard from the lips of Jesus, 
"To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." The 
Catholic does not expect that, but he hopes, after 
thousands of years of purgatorial fire, to reach heaven. 
And meanwhile here on earth he escapes the strain of 
thinking for himself, of discovering truth, of living the 
life of active personal faith. 

All this is attractive in its way, and explains the 
reaction to Catholicism in England, and the readiness 
to wink at the frauds and forgeries and fictions on 
which, admittedly, the Catholic system was built up. 
The Donation of Constantine, the forged Decretals, the 
perversion of Scripture, the building of vast dogmatic 
structures on single texts which are only cited as after- 
thoughts, the obvious injustice and tyranny, the cor- 
ruption of priests, the scandals of convents — to these 
the languid soul shuts its eyes, and snatches at the 
narcotic and the security. 

Protestantism is disappointing. The Catholic has no 
difficulty in showing its failures. Notwithstanding the 
material prosperity of the Protestant countries, and 
the obvious fact that they lead in the path of progress, 
notwithstanding the virtues which have been developed 
by Protestant Christianity, veracity, industry, energy, 
accessibility to ideas, no one can deny that the divisions 
of Protestantism are an offence. Several churches pos- 
ing as the Catholic Church, or claiming virtual infalli- 
bility, are even more absurd than one. The Bible, 
which was declared by Chillingworth to be the religion 

8 7 



My Belief 

of Protestants, has been dissected, analysed, discredited, 
denied by Protestant scholars. And we become 
impatient of the pretence that each person can under- 
stand and expound that complicated literature, without 
knowledge or scholarship or training. 

Protestantism has few charms. So far as it was a 
resistance to error and an assertion of truth, it was 
noble, and, to strenuous natures, attractive. But 
reduced to a State system, as in Lutheran countries ; or 
split into rivalries as in England, where the spirit of free- 
dom has brought half the Christian population out of 
the State Church ; or exposed to the vagaries and extra- 
vagances of new pretenders and new creeds, as in 
America, Protestantism forfeits the admiration and 
allegiance of mankind. Its virtue lies in its freedom. 
A Christian may belong to a Protestant church without 
sacrificing reason or liberty ; he does not commit himself 
to a discredited authority, and a disproved creed, and a 
corrupting despotism, as the Catholic does. So far, 
then, the Protestant is better off, and Protestantism 
presents a more hopeful future. 

But what I plead for is not the vindication of Pro- 
testantism against Catholicism, but the vindication of 
Christianity against them both. Christianity is found 
throughout Christendom, among Catholics and Pro- 
testants alike ; the person of Christ, His teaching, His 
authority, the facts of His life and death, the working of 
the Holy Spirit, the beautiful personalities of Christian 
believers in all ages; the precepts, ideals, and moral 
standards which Christianity has created, the experi- 
ences of the Christian life, the whole view of God and 



The Claims of Rome 

man, the course of conduct, the motive for action, the 
prospects in this world and the next ; in a word, the 
religion which is perennial and eternal and vital, 
recovering from its grossest perversions in churches 
and institutions, that religion which makes Christen- 
dom, and distinguishes Christendom very sharply from 
Mohammedanism or Heathenism, this it is which we 
have to vindicate, believe in and live for. For this 
new channels and new forms of expression are to be 
sought. If you believe in Christ, really, deeply, vitally, 
you will not be dismayed by the travesty of Catholicism, 
or the disintegrations of Protestantism : you will know 
that the kingdoms of the world must yet become the 
kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ. 

Books recommended : " Roman Catholicism as a Factor in European 
Politics," F. C. Conybeare (Skeffington & Son); "What is Catholi- 
cism ? " by Edmond Scherer (Grant Richards) ; ' ' Modern Romanism 
Examined," by H. W. Dearden (James Nisbet) ; " The Principles of 
Protestantism," by J. P. Lilley (T. & T. Clark); "Evangelical 
Belief," by J. B. Nichols (R.T.S.) ; " From St. Francis to Dante," by 
G. C. Coulton (David Nutt). 



8 9 



V 

UNITARIANISM 

That there is a surface drift towards Unitarianism in 
the Protestant Churches throughout the world no 
careful observer can deny. The Liberal school of 
theologians in Germany and Switzerland practically 
stands in the position of Professor Bousset of Gottin- 
gen, who in his book, " What is Religion ? " anticipates a 
Christianity of the future, in which the Person and the 
Gospel of Jesus will be everything, but the Church will 
have thrown off such old garments as " the conception 
of redemption, the dogma of the divinity of Christ, the 
doctrine of the Trinity, the idea of vicarious sacrifice, 
the belief in the miraculous and the old view of revela- 
tion." The points for which Unitarianism has always 
stood are thus freely admitted by the advanced school 
of Protestant theologians abroad, and in our own 
country by the advocates of the New Theology. The 
charge which Catholics bring against Protestants — of 
tending towards Unitarianism — is strikingly vindicated. 
And in all probability the Catholic reaction in Pro- 
testant countries, in Holland, England, and America, 
is partly due to the fear, the anguished fear of many 
tender souls, lest the critical theology which moves 
freely in Protestantism, may have taken away their 
Lord, and they know not where they may find Him. 

90 



Unitarianism 

But if there is a surface drift to Unitarianism, there 
is an underdrift in the opposite direction. Herrmann 
and his followers in Germany, surrendering the dogma 
of Christ's divinity, recover the fact of it in a return to 
the Jesus of the Gospels, treated as the objective ground 
of communion with God. English Unitarianism, 
which has always retained at its heart the Christian 
experience, as the writings of Martineau show, produces 
such a study as Principal Drummond's "The Way, 
the Truth and the Life " ; the Jesus who is presented 
in that work is Divine ; or at any rate the train of reason- 
ing there presented leads to the very position which finds 
expression in the Church doctrine of Christ's Divinity. 

It is remarkable, and perhaps typical, that the author 
of "The Spirit and the Incarnation," and "Christian 
Theism and a Spiritual Monism," Rev. W. L. Walker, 
one of the strongest and most original theologians of our 
time, should have begun his pilgrimage as a Unitarian. 
Perhaps the judgement may be hazarded, that Uni- 
tarianism is gaining many people who were brought up 
in orthodoxy, but not converting the world. It has no 
mission to the heathen, and only a very limited mission 
to the lapsed and vicious classes in Christian countries. 
In a poor district of Aberdeen, where open-air preaching 
is common, a Unitarian minister bravely faced the 
people and preached his Gospel to them ; but after a 
time or two they told him that if that was all he had to 
tell them, it was of no use his coming. " Your rope," 
said one fallen woman standing by, " is nae lang eneuch 
for me." Unitarianism satisfies some intellects which 
cannot accept or understand the dogmas of orthodoxy. 

9i 



My Belief 

It is a wistful and honest pis-aller. There is no shout 
of a King in the camp. If Protestantism were becoming 
Unitarian, we might forecast its future by the fate of 
Arianism, which after holding its own for four centuries, 
and gaining emperors, courts and armies to itself, 
vanished quietly away. But, as I will attempt to show, 
Protestantism is not Unitarian, nor can it ever be. It 
sheds off its Unitarian elements age after age, and goes 
on its triumphant way. The English Presbyterians of 
the seventeenth century became largely Unitarian, the 
chapels still in use were in many cases built by the 
orthodox, and passed over with the loss of the original 
faith to the negative side. But the faith of the Presby- 
terians survived and grew among the Independents ; 
and now a new English Presbyterian Church has arisen, 
vigorous and progressive. The Free Churches of this 
country, as by an automatic process, slough off their 
Unitarian ministers and adherents. In each generation 
there are a few earnest and seeking souls that stand for 
a Unitarian interpretation of Christianity, but they drop 
out; the Free Churches know them no more, and 
resume their way unmoved. 

The decay of New England Unitarianism tells the 
same story ; Channing, Parker, and James Freeman 
Clarke, supported by the most brilliant group of 
American literary men, Emerson, Longfellow, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, might, one would have supposed, 
have won those unfettered churches of the New World 
to the Unitarian position. But it has proved to be 
otherwise. The other churches have rapidly advanced : 
the Unitarians, even in Boston, have stood still. 

92 



Unitarianism 

In Continental Protestantism the theologians have 
produced a widespread Unitarian influence. But who 
can say that Continental Protestantism is flourishing ? 
Doubtless it is largely Unitarian ; but it is also largely 
dead. Its lifeless services, its paralysis in the presence 
of an active Romanism and a hostile Socialism, its 
want of great and inspiring leaders, its loss of the 
bulk of the population from its worship and its 
church institutions, are not a satisfactory justification 
of a Unitarian theology. There is a warning which the 
wise will read. 

But there evidently is a perplexing problem for the 
seeker after truth within the borders of Protestantism. 
Suppose you are resolved to be Christian, and con- 
vinced that the Roman claims are impossible and 
demoralising, must you not of necessity follow the 
prevailing schools of Protestant theology and become 
Unitarian ? 

The question may, through its vastness and rami- 
fications, easily get out of hand. We must therefore 
define as carefully as possible the limits of the 
discussion. 

First, we will try to clear the issue by showing how 
and in what sense we are to believe in the Divinity of 
Christ. 

Second, we will show the nature and strength 
of the argument for that belief. 

Third, we will try to show the intrinsic reasonable- 
ness, apart from all dogmatic considerations, of what is 
called the Trinitarian, as distinct from the Unitarian 
position. 

93 



My Belief 

In the whole discussion we must keep in charitable 
touch with our Unitarian fellow-Christians. A view 
which commends itself to a great thinker like 
Martineau, and a great scholar like Harnack, men of 
undoubted Christian life and conduct, must be treated 
with respect. There is no room for invective or denun- 
ciation. Unless reasonable arguments can be advanced, 
it is better to be silent. The appeal to a subjective 
experience, which for many simple Christians is decisive, 
is inappropriate in this chapter. There is a place, both 
in practice and in theory, for such psychological 
testimony. The vast number of people who say: 
"Jesus is God, I know it, I feel it, I have proved it 
through years of trial and difficulty," must always carry 
weight with every truly scientific observer. The line of 
thought carried out with such brilliance in Professor 
William James's " Varieties of Religious Experience," 
has opened the minds of all psychologists to take into 
account such facts. But the object here and now is 
to try the case in the courts of pure reason, to see 
what evidence can be presented for the vital belief of 
Christendom in Christ's divinity, to estimate how 
far the objections to it can be answered, to look at the 
subject in the daylight of history and of logic. 

In a word, I write this chapter on the supposition 
that the reader is a Unitarian, or at least that he is 
strongly drawn to the Unitarian position. I assume 
that whoever has no difficulty on this subject will pass 
the chapter by. 

i. How and in what sense are we to believe in the 
Divinity of Christ ? 

94 



Unitarianism 

We must distinguish between the doctrine of the 
Divinity of Christ, stated in the Creeds as the result of 
the long controversy of the Ecumenical Councils, and 
the Divinity of Christ discovered in the New Testament, 
and verified by the experience of faith. The one is 
metaphysical, the other is practical. The one is 
established by a process of reasoning, the other by a 
process of living. The one is usually accepted simply 
on authority, as a dogma, the other is known by the 
exertion of conscience, feeling and will, in the pursuit 
of goodness and Godliness. 

The Credal belief in Christ's Divinity may be with- 
out religious result ; the other belief is only reached as 
a result of a genuine religious process. 

For Catholics and those who mean by religion 
submission to authority without reasoning, the Credal 
belief is enough. They accept the dogma readily, 
just as they believe, by a very similar act of intellectual 
humility, that the whale swallowed Jonah ; but the 
belief has no vital relation to them. If the reasoning 
faculty should awake, the belief is doomed. The meta- 
physic of the eighth century is not real to the twentieth 
century; the process by which the Catholic Church estab- 
lished her doctrine is as doubtful in reasoning as it is in 
morality; the Creed, reached by the mutual bludgeon- 
ing of the bishops in the Council of Ephesus, is not only 
devoid of rational proof, it is suspect by the very mode of 
its establishment. He who sets out to prove religious 
dogmas by the defence of the Ecumenical Councils, and 
the theory that they are the work of the Holy Ghost, 
will succeed only with those who are determined to 

95 



My Belief 

sacrifice their reason to authority, and who assume 
that the Roman Church is the unquestionable Authority 
of God. 

I confess that if the evidence of the Divinity of 
Christ were of this kind, I should not for a moment 
believe : I should join the ranks of the thoughtful and 
instructed men who in Catholic countries have sadly 
renounced Christianity. 

But the belief in Christ's Divinity rests really on 
quite a different argument, is reached by quite a 
different process. The belief, to be of any religious 
value, must not be assumed, but reached. Herrmann 
has pointed out that to Luther the act of believing 
in the Deity of Christ was no simple matter ; it was 
an art. "Hence it is an art so to recognise this 
King, that He is true God and man." 1 We arrive at 
the Divinity of Christ as the first believers did, not by 
taking the abstract idea of Deity and asserting that He 
is Divine, but by taking Him, as He is shown to us, and 
coming through Him to a genuine idea of Deity. We 
do not first know God, and then say that Christ is God ; 
we first know Christ, and through that knowledge we 
find the knowledge of God. 

Nothing is more barren than to say that we are saved 
by believing in the Divinity of Christ. Such a belief 
does not and cannot save. We are saved by believing 
in Christ ; the Divinity is an inference from the faith ; 
we find Him divine because He has brought us to God. 

We begin with the Man, Jesus, that person who is 
presented to us in the Gospel narrative, that person 
1 w Communion with God " (Eng. trans.), p. 167, 

96 



Unitarianism 

who appears in the spiritual experience of Paul. We 
believe in Him, in His life, in His death, in His words, 
His teaching, His promises. We are not thinking what 
category He belongs to, human or divine. He draws 
us, He commands us ; by the faith in Him, the life that 
is our example, and the death which, as He says, 
He suffered for us, we are conscious of pardon and 
reconciliation to God, we find that we are new 
creatures, we have the experience of the Holy Spirit. 
Thus we are led to the belief that Jesus has for us the 
value of God ; in contact with Him we touch God ; 
through Him we discover that God is holy, pardoning 
Love. No other man has or can have this value for us. 
He is put in a category apart. On the ground of what 
He is, and what He has done for us, we give Him the 
unique name, the name that is above every name for us 
in heaven or on earth. Because by Him we find God 
and are reconciled to God, and by Him alone, we say 
that He is the God-man, the mediator between God 
and Man. We do not deny, nay, through Him we are 
bound to affirm, a divinity in all men ; that men can be 
reconciled to God shows that intrinsically they are 
homogeneous with God. But the divinity in Christ is 
quite other than the divinity in man as such ; not only 
is it the fulness of God manifest in a Man, but it is a 
redemptive, saving, manifestation of Divinity ; it seeks 
to save other men, it does save them, it approves itself 
to be God in a special sense by saving them. When 
we thus see what is meant by the Divinity of Christ, 
viz., that practical experience of His nature, which was 
reached by the first believers and is reached by us when 

97 g 



My Belief 

we believe in Him and are saved by Him, we are able 
to realise the truth which, though clear enough in fact, 
seems to be somewhat of a paradox. A man may 
believe in the Divinity of Christ and yet not be a 
Christian at all ; while a man may be a Christian and 
not yet have reached the confession of the Divinity, 
though of course he is in the way to the discovery. 
Another paradoxical fact is also explained : the insist- 
ence on the Divinity of Christ as an external dogma 
may hinder one from coming to Him ; for confronting 
the mind with a metaphysical nut to crack, it may 
excite all the rational processes of questioning, doubt, 
refutation and denial. If, on the other hand, the mind 
and heart and conscience are confronted simply with 
Jesus, as He was and is, the person whose career and 
character are the theme of the New Testament, few are 
able to resist His charm, His inherent truth and 
unpretentious authority. Drawn into sympathy with 
Him, and then into obedience, believing in Him, as He 
asks that we should, we are warmed, we are trans- 
formed ; we cannot long resist the impulse which led 
doubting Thomas to exclaim : " My Lord, and my 
God." 

2. We are now in a position to estimate the nature 
and strength of the argument for the belief. Our 
attention is directed to the origin of Christianity and 
its records. We are obliged to notice in the New Testa- 
ment the process by which the contemporaries of Jesus 
were led to regard Jesus, not merely as the ideal man, 
but as the Lord from heaven. 

Professor Gwatkin makes a rather startling admission. 

9 8 



Unitarianism 

The whole question, he says, depends on the historical 
trustworthiness of the New Testament. If these 
writings are more or less authentic, there will be more 
or less of a case for Christ's divinity ; if legendary, He 
can be hardly more than human. 1 Such an admission 
is evidently made in an overwhelming confidence that 
the historical trustworthiness of the New Testament is 
established. And Professor Gwatkin is justified in the 
confidence. At the same time the statement may be 
misleading; for it seems not only to explain, but to 
justify, the widespread doubt concerning the Divinity 
of Christ which is felt at the present time, when the 
historical trustworthiness of the documents is called in 
question. The statement does not take into account 
that the Divinity is being constantly affirmed and 
proved by the living experience of those who believe, 
even while the critical and historical questions are 
under discussion. While scholars, critics, and rationa- 
lists, in lecture rooms, on platforms, in pulpits and in 
books, are pulling the New Testament to pieces, the 
New Testament is all the time in all parts of the world 
engaged in saving people. The annual report of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society is a necessary 
counterfoil to the activities of criticism. The historical 
trustworthiness of the New Testament is established in 
such a way that it is beyond the reach of critics. We 
may attend only to critics, and rest for a while in a 
negative conclusion ; but directly we turn again to the 
New Testament, study it, and observe its activity in 
the world, we change our mind ; we see that it is not, 
1 " The Knowledge of God," ii. 47. 

99 G2 



My Belief 

and cannot be, affected. Its veracity is self-supported ; 
the evidence is intrinsic. It is a fact too solid, it has 
lodged itself too securely in the conscience and common 
sense of humanity, to be got rid of by the ingenuities of 
a Strauss or a Baur, by the scholastic ruthlessness of a 
Schmiedel or a Van Manen. 

The healthy scholarship of our day reaffirms the 
historical trustworthiness of the New Testament. 
Harnack places the Four Gospels in the first century ; 
that is to say, they are the primary, necessary, 
historical witnesses of Christ. We have no more right 
to reject them than any other testimonies to any other 
historical person. The sincerity of the writings is 
beyond dispute; their date, within limits, is also 
beyond dispute. When in the second century Tatian 
made the Diatessaron, the conflation of the four, the 
Gospels were already accepted as the ancient and 
authentic biographies of Jesus. At the end of the 
second century Irenaeus already regarded the four as 
the inevitable number ; he compared them to the 
cardinal points, North, South, East and West. These 
historical documents must be treated as we treat other 
ancient documents. No wise person deprecates textual 
and historical criticism, as applied to them. We are 
prepared to make allowance for inaccuracies, for 
legendary and disputable elements. But they are 
history, and the person who is presented in them is as 
much a historic person as Caesar or Josephus : and we 
know more, and know it more certainly, about Him 
than about them. 

The vindication of the historical quality and value of 

ioo 



Unitarianism 

the Acts of the Apostles by the archaeological researches 
of Sir William Ramsay sets this book of the New 
Testament side by side with the Gospels. No ancient 
history is better than this. If this is not history, we 
have no knowledge of the past. 

The Epistles of St. Paul are an authority of unques- 
tioned validity. Some of them are certainly his 
autograph productions; the others, together with the 
remaining bocks of the New Testament, if not certainly 
the production of the writers to whom tradition 
assigned them, are unquestionably correct pictures of 
the faith and life and practices of the earliest believers 
in Christ. 

Thus broadly speaking, while the work of criticism is 
ever proceeding, and opinions vary about this or that 
book's date, and there is room for difference of opinion 
about the correctness of this or that detail, the 
historical trustworthiness of the New Testament is 
assured. If we desire to know Cicero, we read his 
letters and speeches. If we wish to understand Caesar 
we read his writings and the memoirs and references of 
Suetonius, Lucan, Tacitus, and the other writers of the 
century which followed his death. When we desire to 
know and to understand Jesus Christ, we with equal con- 
fidence and certainty read the group of contemporary 
records and documents which testify of Him. They are 
collected in the book which we call the New Testament. 

But if this is the right view of the New Testament, 
if it is the historic window through which we look into 
the life and work of Christ, we not only have a firm 
ground to rest on, but we are logically compelled to 

101 



My Belief 

rest on that ground. That is to say, the Person who is 
there presented must be taken as He is presented. If 
that contemporary portrait is incorrect, we cannot 
correct it. The attempt to recast it on subjective 
grounds must always remain inconclusive. If we 
approach the authorities with a preconceived theory, 
if, for example, we start with a conviction that there 
cannot be a Divine man, a Son of God incarnate, and 
if in consequence we proceed to cut away and discredit 
all that does not harmonise with our theory, the result 
will be not a historic person, but only a subjective 
creation of our own prejudice. 

The Unitarian starts with an a priori assumption that 
Jesus cannot be God ; he therefore tones down and 
explains away all the parts of the New Testament which 
say or imply that He was ; just as Tolstoy recasts the 
Gospel, so that it brings out exactly the teaching which 
he wishes to enforce, and the rest disappears. But this 
method is neither historical nor logical. It is only 
critical in a perverse sense. 

Confessedly in Jesus Christ we are dealing with a very 
extraordinary and unique Person. The first duty is to 
accept the accounts we possess of Him, and to form a 
distinct image of His character, His activity, His life, 
His message for mankind. If we study with a bias ; 
if our criticism is determined by a preliminary rejection 
of the Christian revelation, we are not dealing honestly 
with ourselves or with the subject. 

The only logical and honest results can be obtained 
by a careful and thoughtful and connected study of the 
New Testament as a whole, regarded as the historic 

102 



Unitarianism 

testimony, the only possible historic testimony, we have 
to Jesus Christ. The impression which that study pro- 
duces on the mind, the image so portrayed, the Person 
with whom spiritual contact is so obtained, is the reality 
which confronts us in Christianity. With that Christ 
we have to deal ; it is faith in that Christ which saves ; 
in the sense that the Christ so realised, so believed, and 
in that manner saving, is God, and only in that sense, 
we can and ought to believe in His Divinity. 

The study which is here enjoined will make one thing 
very plain to the candid reader ; that every writing in 
the New Testament treats Jesus as more than, and 
different from, an ordinary man. The claim of a unique 
relation to God, on the lips of Jesus, as He speaks in 
the Gospels, is allowed by all the writers. Seldom is 
the assertion made that Jesus is God; no abstract 
doctrine of His Divinity is maintained ; but each writer 
reflects the common conviction, which is expressed in 
the locus classicus of Matt. xi. 27 : " All things have 
been delivered unto me of my Father, and no one 
knoweth the Son save the Father ; neither doth any 
know the Father save the Son and he to whomsoever 
the Son willeth to reveal Him." 

It may justly be said that the doctrine of the two 
natures, or the two wills, or the doctrine of the Trinity, 
as formulated by the Church, is not defended by the 
Apostolic writers. And when the sceptic declares that 
the New Testament does not teach these things, the 
only reasonable answer is to acknowledge : No, these 
are inferences drawn from the facts of the New Testa- 
ment in the first eight centuries of Christianity. But 

103 



My Belief 

just as little can anyone deny that every writer of the 
New Testament is agreed in treating Jesus as the unique 
middle point between God and man, manifested to man 
in order to unite man with God. Every writer has his 
own mode of thought, but substantially all agree. That 
He is the Son of God, the only-begotten, emerging out 
of the bosom of God, to live a human life and die a 
human death for man, is the predominant thought of 
Paul, Peter and John. 

That being the Divine Son, He could not be held by 
death, and therefore rose again, and sits at the right 
hand of God, is the idea which rings through Acts. In 
Matthew the parable of the Son sent to the vineyard sets 
Him in contrast to the prophets, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, who had come before Him. 1 The 
Epistle to the Hebrews opens with a similar contrast 
between the message of prophets and Old Testament 
writers, and the message of a Son, the effulgence of God's 
glory and the very image of His substance. In one of 
those later epistles, doubtfully attributed to Paul, there is 
a phrase so startling that the A. V. toned it down ; the 
Greek admits of but one rendering, " our great God and 
Saviour Jesus Christ." 2 In the Revelation we have this 
remarkable fact, that the claim " I am Alpha and Omega, 
the beginning and the end" is at the opening of the book 
in the mouth of God, and at the close in the mouth of 
Jesus. These are but illustrations of the phenomenon 
which confronts us on almost every page of the New 
Testament. Jesus, the Christ of history, was from 
the first recognised by those who knew Him — it is 

1 MATT. XXL 37. 2 TIT. ii. 13. 

IO4 



Unitarianism 

evident in all the earliest and authentic witnesses 
to Him — as a Being quite unique. His birth was a 
coming, an incarnation of a divine logos, a Son. His 
life was a manifestation in humanity of a character 
such as humanity cannot produce, sinless, good, in 
close relation with God, bent on saving men by a 
selfless sacrifice and devotion. His death was a 
deliberate and conscious offering for the sins of the 
world, by which sin was condemned and all who believed 
in Him could be forgiven. His resurrection was 
inevitable. His actual presence in the Spirit, after 
His death, and for all time, was a fact which they were 
led to expect by His word, and experienced in the 
formation and growth of the Church. 

It is very hard to see how any reader of the New 
Testament can fail to admit that this is the concurrent 
testimony of its writers. It is easy to quote passages 
which bring out the humanity of Jesus, or illustrate the 
limitations of knowledge or power which were imposed 
by His earthly life. An exclusive attention to such 
passages may justify a polemical reader in saying that 
according to the New Testament, Jesus was only a 
man. But that is only one side of the question, a side 
which no one wishes to dispute ; for if He was not man 
He cannot save men. But when the evidence of the 
writers of the New Testament is taken as it stands, and 
allowed to have its full effect, as the witnesses in a court 
are allowed to speak unfettered and undeterred, surely 
no one can question that they thought of Jesus as 
Divine. Whatever may be said of the dogmas which 
are expressed in the creeds ; whatever reasons derived 

105 



My Belief 

from other sources, a man may have for disbelieving or 
rejecting the testimony of the New Testament, the 
candid student is bound to admit that the New Testa- 
ment writers — and they are not only our best, but our 
sole authorities, for the Jesus of history — affirm that He 
was God and Man, the unique Being, or Mediator, by 
whom man and God can be made at one. 

3. The intrinsic reasonableness of the doctrine which is 
known as Trinitarian. It is not difficult to state the 
doctrine of the Divinity of Christ in a way which seems 
to offer a defiance to the reason. The Athanasian 
Creed has gone some distance in that direction. In 
such a statement the Church delights to emphasize the 
paradox of the situation, and to declare with the school- 
man, " I believe not only although, but because, it is 
impossible." Nor can it be denied that there are 
nations, epochs and individual minds, to which this 
method commends itself. In Catholic countries the 
appeal to reason is irrelevant ; and among ourselves 
there are many women and effeminate men, to whom 
the sacrifice of reason is a positive delight. It is from 
this tendency of human nature that the extravagant 
dogmatic formulae and claims take their rise. 

But it must also be remembered that the doctrine of 
the Divinity of Christ can be stated in a way which 
does not collide with the reason, but rather offers an 
intellectual rest, in face of the mystery of the world, the 
soul, and God. It is only where a doctrine satisfies and 
fortifies reason, that it proves in the end to be genuinely 
religious. A religion which begins by the sacrifice of 
reason is on the way to become a superstition. 

106 



Unitarianism 

Ever since the Reformation there have been men, a 
succession of men, who have accepted the truth of 
Christ's Divinity as the key to the puzzle of life, and 
the idea of a triune God as the only rational interpreta- 
tion of God. But there are some tendencies of thought 
in these later times which set this central Christian 
doctrine in a stronger light, and make it more intrinsi- 
cally credible than ever. The intellectual background 
of our time is Agnosticism, and the reply which faith 
makes to Agnosticism is couched in terms of the 
Immanence of God. Now both of these attitudes of 
mind bring into a clear relief the idea that Christ was 
God manifest in the flesh. 

For Agnosticism, as it appears in the philosophy of 
Herbert Spencer, has made mankind realise that God, 
apart from revelation, is unknown and unknowable. 
Unitarianism always started from an assumed know- 
ledge of God ; and knowing, or thinking that it knew, 
what God was, it denied that Jesus was God. But 
Agnosticism has taught us that we do not know so 
much of God as we thought we did ; indeed we have 
no such a priori knowledge of God as can justify us in 
saying that Jesus is not God. God is unknown and 
unknowable, a presupposition necessary to explain phe- 
nomena, but not otherwise known than as the Cause of 
phenomena. In face of this Agnostic position, Uni- 
tarianism wakes to the discovery that the God it knows, 
or thinks it knows, it knows only from and through and in 
Jesus. The Father who cares for men and loves them, 
the Redeemer who seeks to save and recover them, the 
unswerving and omnipotent Love that will not let men 

107 



My Belief 

go, is known in one way, and in one way only, by the 
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face 
of Christ Jesus. Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, do 
not know this God. Science, philosophy, natural reli- 
gion do not know Him. But since He is known only in 
Christ, it is impossible to use the idea of such a God 
to discredit the soul or consciousness, in which alone it 
was found. 

Agnosticism has in this way shaken Unitarianism. 
Christ we know or can know, but God we do not and 
cannot know. Only if God is manifest in Christ do we 
know Him at all in a personal and intimate sense. 

But the line of argument which is increasingly 
adopted to meet the apparently invincible attack of 
Agnosticism is that which arises from recognizing the 
Immanence of God. But this argument, the more it is 
pressed, becomes more and more favourable to the doc- 
trine of Christ's Divinity. In human personality as such 
God is latent. The soul is, as such, an expression of 
God. It is by virtue of the divine spark, the partaking 
of the divine essence, that we are men. We are 
directed, not to heaven nor to earth, if we would find God, 
but within. When I say " I," and reflect on what is 
meant by the word, I implicitly say " God " ; not of 
course that I am God, but that " I " implies God. The 
evidence for God lies not in arguments cosmological or 
ontological, but in the rational and moral nature of 
man. Sin is a certain blindness which results from 
egotism. But when I open my eyes, and escape from 
the contraction of self, I see God. 

Now it is evident that this line of argument which 

108 



Unitarianism 

finds God in human souls, leads us to the conclusion, 
that the larger, the truer, the purer the soul is, the 
clearer and more certain God will be. We shall 
derive our best knowledge of God from examining the 
souls of the best human beings. But this implies that if 
there is a best human being, a man who is free from sin 
altogether, God will be revealed in him as fully as God 
can be revealed. We should naturally search the his- 
tory of mankind for such a human soul; we should 
expect that God would manifest Himself in such a soul, 
for the guidance and salvation of men. 

But when, with this thought in our minds, we turn 
to the records of Jesus Christ, we discover that this is 
exactly what He was. We are enabled to look into His 
soul ; and there for the first time the Immanence of 
God becomes a transparent reality. The distinctive 
marks of His consciousness, as compared with ourselves 
and the best of men, are three : (i) He is not conscious 
of sin; He has no need of repentance, no memory of 
having sinned. (2) He enjoys an unclouded commu- 
nion with God ; He and His Father are never separated 
in will or act. (3) He alone exists, only to save and 
serve humanity. We cannot detect any personal aim, 
or any self-regarding activity. He is in the world to 
save it. 

The doctrine of the Immanence of God, then, the 
idea that God is in us all, leads us irresistibly to the 
conclusion that " God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto Himself." Nor can it be said that the 
recognition of divinity in all humanity weakens in any 
degree the divinity in Christ. For it is precisely the 

109 



My Belief 

qualitative difference between us and Him, the fact that 
while He is sinless we are sinful, while His communion 
with God is unbroken ours is fitful and unconscious, 
and that, while He exists to save, we are marred by a 
persistent and shameful egotism, that opens up to us 
the whole chasm which separates us from our goal in 
God. The divinity in us is germinal ; it is marred and 
deflected ; it is often sunk beneath consciousness and 
practically lost ; we need a regenerative process to 
recover and to develop it. But in Him the divinity is 
unchecked and fully developed ; and it offers to us 
redemption and recovery through believing in Him. 

The place which Jesus the Divine man has in the 
Godhead is only inferentially revealed to us. If we are 
wise we refrain from speculation. The Trinitarian 
formula, that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 
should not be pressed any farther than the facts shown 
in the New Testament take it. It is the attempt to fix 
in a clear-cut phrase the truth, that the God we know 
and worship is the Father revealed to us in His Son, 
Christ Jesus, and known by us through the Spirit 
imparted to us by faith. 

We see then that the Divinity of Christ is a reasonable 
doctrine. We see that it is a fact presented to us in the 
historic sources of our religion. To the earliest witnesses 
who carried the glad tidings through the Roman world, 
Jesus was the Son of God who became flesh to unite us 
with God, to put away sin, to pardon, to regenerate us, 
and to make us partakers of the divine nature. The issue 
presented by the first followers of Christ must be 
presented in each age anew ; and every man must make 

no 



Unitarianism 

his choice. The claim which Jesus makes is wonderful, 
distinct, divine : " Come unto me, and I will give you 
rest " ; " Thy sins be forgiven thee " ; " Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth 
Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not 
into judgement, but hath passed out of death into life " ; 
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 

As Professor Gwatkin says : " There is no rest in the 
halting, half and half theories, which look for living 
power to a purely human Christ who never rose with 
power from the dead. You may worship Christ, or you 
may seat Necessity upon the throne of God and worship 
that." 1 Such is really the issue to which the progress 
of modern thought and discovery has led us. To that 
choice we are shut up. 

The New Testament writers speak with a solemn and 
warning voice. One has spoken from Heaven ; see that 
you refuse not the speaker. Never did the situation 
seem clearer than now. There have been many 
thinkers, prophets and religious founders in the world ; 
and through them broken truths have filtered into the 
human mind. But Christ is apart from them ; He is 
sui generis. He speaks to man not as a teacher or 
prophet, but as a Son. His words are the limpid 
expression of Divine truth, making a direct appeal to 
the conscience and the heart of man. If He did not 
speak from Heaven, no voice has come from beyond ; 
God is dumb and inscrutable. But if He spoke from 
Heaven — and the claim is substantiated by the effects 
which always follow belief in Him and obedience to His 

1 " The Knowledge of God," i. 240. 
Ill 



My Belief 

word — the responsibility of listening is plain. At 
least it presents a prima facie reason for attention and 
consideration. For, to quote once more from Professor 
Gwatkin, " whether that claim be true or false in fact, 
no condemnation can be too severe for the man who 
snatches at the first excuse for accepting or rejecting 
it. Right or wrong, he is gambling with truth." 

Books recommended : Liddon's Bampton Lecture, " The Divinity of 
Christ " (Longmans & Co.) ; Principal Fairbairn's " The Place of Christ 
in Modern Theology " (Hodder & Stoughton). 



112 



VI 

CAN WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE? 

"Criticism," says Professor Gwatkin, "has demo- 
lished alike the Catholic assumption of an infallible 
Church and the Protestant assumption of an infallible 
Book." 1 Of course, there are Catholics who believe in 
the infallibility of the Church, and there are Protestants 
who believe in the infallible Book. But in each case 
the belief is maintained not only without evidence, but 
in the teeth of evidence, by the sheer exertion of cre- 
dulity which refuses to look at the facts. When at the 
Reformation the progressive part of Christendom 
rejected the former dogma, the latter was insensibly 
substituted for it. All that the Church had claimed for 
itself the Reformers claimed for the Bible. For nearly 
three hundred years the infallibility of the Bible was 
accepted, without question and without proof. And 
then the very spirit which made the Protestant Refor- 
mation raised the question and demanded the proof. 
Directly the question was raised in the theological 
schools of Germany, and began to find an echo in the 
far more conservative schools of England, the fact 
became clear that there was no proof. The assumption 
was only an assumption, arising out of the unique 
interest and significance of the Bible, an assumption 

i "The Knowledge of God," ii, 289. 

113 H 



My Belief 

not made fraudulently, but allowed to steal into the 
mind when criticism slumbered. No, there was no 
proof. The Bible never says itself that it is infallible. 
How could it ? for it is a collection of writings from 
many different pens and ages. It cannot, like the 
Koran, speak of itself as a book at all. It is a library 
of books. Very ignorant people might read the words 
about " this book " at the end of Revelation and suppose 
that the book referred to was the Bible. Possibly the 
superstitious awe which gathered about the Bible was due 
to this misunderstanding. " This book " was the Revela- 
tion, but as for Christian readers the whole Canon of 
Scripture had for centuries been regarded as a single 
volume, the solemn warning against adding to or taking 
from the words of Revelation was artlessly transferred 
to the whole Canon. 

This may be said to be the only evidence ever adduced 
for the infallibility of the Bible. One writer, the writer 
of a book which was not for some centuries admitted 
without question into the Canon, endeavoured to secure 
the integrity of his Apocalypse by warning the reader 
against impairing it. And by the accident of the 
position of Revelation at the end of our Bible, the 
warning appears to apply to the large collection of 
writings which cover at the least a thousand years ! 
For the rest, there is no evidence at all. In the Bible there 
are many writers and speakers who claim to be deliver- 
ing the truth of God, but never does the Bible as such 
claim to be the word of God. In the collection there is a 
great variety of literary forms — stories, annals, poems, 
sententious sayings, prophecies, biographies, history, 

114 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

letters, apocalypses. Each of these forms appears in its 
own character, and makes just the claim that such litera- 
ture makes elsewhere. All the writings are religious ; in 
them God and His truth are the theme ; taken as a 
whole, they give us more truth about religion, and 
better truth, than any other collection of works which 
has been or can be made. In this sense, therefore, we 
may call them the book of God, or the word of God. 
But we have no warrant whatever for saying that God 
wrote the Book, or that whatever is found in it must be 
regarded as His utterance. Such an idea is absolutely 
without foundation, and is indeed irreverent and even 
blasphemous. When we look at the Book without bias 
or dogmatic presuppositions we wonder how anyone, 
however careless, could have conceived such an idea. 
Everything militates against it. The stories of the 
Bible cover the whole range between myth or legend 
and authentic contemporary records or history. The 
most diverse stages of religious belief and spiritual cul- 
ture are represented. The old is superseded by the new. 
Indeed, the great argument of the New Testament is 
that the Old has passed away. The Law which to the 
Jew seemed so divine is brushed aside by Paul so ruth- 
lessly that he maintains the position that to accept the 
Law in its entirety is to reject Christ. He argues that 
the whole history of the Law is an interlude, but that 
the religion of Faith runs on from Abraham to Christ 
in spite of it. How could this picture of change and 
development, an old order changing and giving place 
to new, time-honoured precepts and principles and 
practices discarded, a gospel, or good news from God, 

115 H 2 



My Belief 

establishing itself against all the prejudices of the Jewish 
religion — how could a book which survives such an 
evolution ever be mistaken for a book written, like the 
tables of stone, by the finger of God, or for a uniform 
and consistent law-book, a handbook of religious truth 
and practice ? And yet the dogma, the unreasoning 
dogma, of Biblical infallibility was so firmly rooted that 
it was opposed as an argument against the discoveries 
of physical science. The Copernican astronomy was 
godless because it conflicted with the astronomy of 
Scripture ; the path of geology was blocked by the 
Biblical view of creation as the work of six days ; the 
most fruitful and far-reaching discovery of the nineteenth 
century — the fact of organic evolution — was fiercely 
opposed on the ground of Scripture texts. Above all, 
the dogma was used to denounce and demolish all 
scholars who applied to the Bible itself the ordinary 
principles of literary and historical criticism. 

The dogma was so ingrained in the mind of 
unbelievers like Tom Paine, or of believers like 
Spurgeon, that both sides believed that Christianity 
was overthrown, if this baseless dogma were questioned. 
Paine overwhelmed the doctrine with ridicule, and 
supposed that he had demolished Christianity ; Spur- 
geon thought he was defending Christianity by 
reasserting without any evidence the old dogma. 
The dogma was so hoary and antiquated that to many 
even now it seems difficult to value the Bible at all, 
unless they may have with it the spicy sauce of infalli- 
bility. Twenty years ago, when I published my 
" Inspiration and the Bible," a book in which the 

116 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

facts of the Bible itself were pointed out, a book in 
which, strange to say, no one has up to this day been 
able to indicate any misstatement, I was told of a young 
man, not a Christian, but brought up in dogmatic 
orthodoxy, who exclaimed : " Well, if that book is 
right, I shall throw my Bible behind the fire ! " Unless 
the Bible could be guaranteed against all possibility of 
error, unless it could be shown that the world was 
created in six days, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch 
with the account of his own death and the mourning 
for him, and the words : " and there hath not arisen 
since in Israel a prophet like unto Moses" 1 ; unless, 
contrary to the plainest fact, Kings and Chronicles 
absolutely agree; unless the four Evangelists can be 
reconciled in every detail ; unless the Epistles of Paul 
and the Acts can be similarly harmonised ; unless he 
can open the Bible at any point, and know that this is 
God's word, God's command, even if he has no inten- 
tion of obeying the command, or altering his course on 
account of the word, this young man would " throw his 
Bible behind the fire." This was the absurd position to 
which the unproved assumption of Biblical infallibility 
had led even intelligent Protestants. 

But no one can fail to see what a shock was involved 
in the frank surrender of the baseless dogma. Nor can 
I for one withhold my warmest sympathy with those 
who in the bewilderment of the change ask, If the 
Bible is not infallible, how can it be an authority ? or, 
If there are true and untrue things in the Bible, how 
shall I know which is which ? or, If the truth is not 

1 DEUT. XXXiv. 10. 
117 



My Belief 

given me in the Bible, where is it given ? To answer 
these and such questions in detail would be a delight. 
I will append at the end of this chapter some references 
which may enable the student to answer them for him- 
self. But here, the three questions propounded shall 
be handled succinctly. 

i. If the Bible is not infallible how can it be an authority ? 
The answer is : If you take the Bible on its own terms, 
and read it without any theory of its infallibility, pre- 
cisely in the same way that you read any other ancient 
book, it establishes its own authority. Hampered by the 
dogma of infallibility you find the opening pages in 
conflict with modern science ; you find the whole story 
of the Exodus so remote from the experience of to-day, 
that it reads like a fairy tale ; you are staggered by the 
tales of blood and extermination in Joshua and Judges; 
you are puzzled by the ethical standards in Samuel 
and Kings ; you stumble at bloodthirsty sentiments in 
the Psalms, and at unfulfilled prophecies in the 
Prophets ; you take exception to every discrepancy or 
miracle in the Gospels and the Acts ; and even the 
Epistles of the New Testament awake the critical 
faculty by their arguments, their suggestions, their 
doctrines. 

But read the Bible without any theory, and let it tell 
upon you precisely as any book you read tells ; get 
any aids to the understanding of the book, such as are 
needed for any work written long ago ; surrender your- 
self to the impressions which the words and the ideas 
make upon you ; and, unless you are differently consti- 
tuted from the rest of mankind, the Book will take you 

118 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

captive. Its interest, its beauty, its variety and charm 
are enthralling. Presently you become conscious that 
you are dealing with God, and God is dealing with you, 
in it. From first to last, it is an incentive to seek God, to 
learn His will, to pray, to worship, to obey. The Book 
unfolds and leads up to Christ and the good news. 
There God is revealed, as nowhere else in the world ; 
Christ becomes the way to God ; by believing in Christ 
you are reconciled to God ; and the Spirit of God 
begins to speak within you. The burden of the book is 
the gradual manifestation of God to man, until He 
shows Himself in the face of Christ Jesus. The book 
presents Christ, and that in so real and hearty a way 
that the reader can come to Him, believe in Him, and 
be transformed by Him. 

All this the book does by itself, apart from any 
theory of its origin or authorship. The subject-matter 
of the book produces the effect on the reader. Make 
all the allowance you choose for pre-scientific views of 
the world and of man, for the mingled value of writings 
which long precede the age of historical criticism, for 
the crude or imperfect moral judgments which are 
recorded from time to time ; do not attempt to believe 
in anything incredible, or to force your reason against 
plain evidence ; and the Book will yet lead you to God, 
to the personal knowledge of God in Christ, to the 
inward experience of God in the soul. 

The evidence for this effect produced by the Bible is 
inexhaustible and overwhelming. Here is one instance 
from thousands which can be quoted : A man was in 
Durham gaol, doing a term of penal servitude for 

119 



My Belief 

attempted murder. A Roman Catholic, he had re- 
gistered himself as a Protestant for certain supposed 
advantages in the prison life. He therefore found a 
Bible in the cell, and read it to pass away the time. 
One day, as he read the New Testament, it occurred to 
him : " If this book is true the priest is not. I can 
pray to God myself." He knelt and asked for forgive- 
ness. The response came : he vowed that he would go 
back to the village where he had committed the crime, 
to show that he was changed. When he was liberated 
he did so, and though the county police regarded him 
with suspicion, he began to speak as a local preacher. 
His work was blessed, and now he is a missionary in 
India. 

A book which works in that way carries its own 
authority with it. While critics are subjecting it to 
their critical processes, they are apt to lose sight of its 
actual qualities, its working power as a book. Just as 
the critic at work on Homer, endeavouring to show how 
the poems grew up, becomes unconscious of the poetry — 
but directly the reader reads the poems as poems, the 
poetry reasserts itself; so the Bible in the hands of the 
critics loses its life and power and significance — but 
directly it is liberated again, with such added light 
and knowledge as critics have been able to bring it 
reasserts its intrinsic quality, as the book of God's revela- 
tion to men. It works in its own appropriate way ; it 
puts out hands and grips the reader ; it shows him his 
own heart ; it wakes the conscience and convinces the 
reason ; it brings him to God in Christ. 

I would be the last to deprecate criticism or to 

120 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

disparage critics, but along with a writer whom I have 
frequently quoted I protest against "the special plead- 
ing of a mechanical criticism, which ignores human 
nature in its chase after literary possibilities, and can 
only make out a plausible case by first assuming 
unlimited falsification and then correcting it with 
unlimited guesswork." 1 If the Bible is not infallible, 
neither are the critics. Their conclusions are only 
valid when they are tested by a fresh recurrence to the 
Bible itself and by the verified experience of the religious 
life. One who knows his Bible at first hand can profit 
by all the work, even the wildest, of the critics ; but 
one who does not know his Bible at all except through 
the writings of the critics cannot fairly estimate the 
Bible or the criticism. 

The one prescription should be : Read the Bible, 
daily, systematically, religiously, with prayer for light, 
and with obedience to the truth revealed. On such 
terms the critics will not disturb you. By such a use 
of the Book, sanctioned by the experience of many 
generations, you will discover its authority, and will 
not regret the baseless dogma of infallibility and 
inerrancy which candour obliges you to surrender. 

1 " Knowledge of God," ii. 21. — Professor Gwatkin says a page or 
two later : " Abbott and Schmiedel are scholars from whom we would 
gladly learn, but they have shown small judgment here (i.e., in the 
reconstruction of the Gospel narrative). Critical methods like these 
will turn any history whatever into romance. As feats of paradox they 
are altogether admirable ; but when they are laid before us as the 
ripest results of modern historical research we are compelled to make 
our protest in the name of truth and sanity against this astounding 
license of reckless theorising, forced interpretations, contempt of 
evidence, and systematic disregard of common sense" (ii. 52). 

121 



My Belief 

2. The second question l is : If there are true and 
untrue things in the Bible, how shall I know which is 
which? As the dogmatists have delighted to put it, 
sowing recklessly the seeds of scepticism : If God is 
wrong in His geology how shall I know that He is 
right in His scheme of redemption ? 

But we cannot admit a question of this latter kind. 
God is not wrong in His geology, because the Bible 
writers were ignorant of scientific facts. His geology 
is written in the rocks, and only waited for intelligence 
and industry to read it. Neither did God make mis- 
takes in history, because the historiographers of 
Scripture only had at command imperfect materials, 
and had not developed the historic sense in handling 
them. God's History is written in His book and will 
be unfolded in due course. 

The question, however, how to know what is true in 
the Bible, apart from the guarantee of infallibility, is 
legitimate enough, though it never would have been 
raised unless the dogma of infallibility had possessed our 
minds. Scientific truth is known by evidence ; historic 
truth is verified by documents or witnesses ; moral and 
religious truth is established by believing and trying it. 
The Bible incidentally deals with scientific truth, but it 
is subject always to the correction of fuller knowledge 
and advancing discovery. Historic truth in the Bible 
is established by the same methods as historic truth 
must be always established. That is to say, where we 
can discover the testimony of contemporaries or the use 
of contemporary documents the narrative is historical. 
1 See p. 117 

122 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

Where these evidences are wanting the narrative is 
traditional, and we must allow for legendary elements 
in it. Where narratives are poetical or mythical, as, 
for instance, in the opening chapters of Genesis, history 
cannot be in question. We are bound, therefore, to 
distinguish between myth and legend and history in the 
Bible, just as we do in all ancient literature. The lines 
of demarcation can be drawn with tolerable accuracy. 
But the distinction is not as important as some people 
think ; for the object of the Bible is not historical, any 
more than it is scientific, truth. The Book is a book of 
moral and religious truth, and truth of that kind is con- 
veyed by different channels, by myth and legend as well 
as by history. Indeed, the marvel of the Bible is, that 
its myths of creation are among the most searchingly 
religious parts of the book ; and the legendary passages — 
like the story of Elijah and Elisha, the book of Esther, 
or the prophets Daniel and Jonah — are admittedly the 
richest in spiritual value and religious teaching. 

But of the moral and religious truth in the Bible, to 
know what is permanent and relative to us, and what 
is only interesting as a stage in a moral and religious 
development, the criterium must be for us all in our 
moral and religious sense. There are and must be 
various degrees of spiritual life, as historically our 
present religion was reached through progressive 
stages. But, speaking broadly, the Bible must be 
judged by Christ. All leads up to Him, and when the 
truth of Christ is revealed, all that went before must be 
modified, corrected, or completed. When Christ is 
found in the Bible, He takes you with Him to find the 

123 



My Belief 

Bible. He opens the things concerning Himself. 
Certainly the Bible fails of its object unless it leads us 
to Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. That, 
practically speaking, is its purpose. Apart from its 
power to fulfil that purpose, it would fall into a place 
among the religious books of the world, eminent, 
pre-eminent, but not essentially different from the 
other writings which have dealt with God and man 
and their mutual relations. The uniqueness of the 
Bible consists in its presentation of Christ, and Christ 
is a living personal reality with whom the soul is 
brought into touch, by whom it is regenerated, purified 
and enlightened. By this illumination the individual, 
as well as the Church, can use the Bible aright, and 
can range through its varied passages and developing 
doctrine with a sure criterium, not merely the subjective 
judgement, not merely the collective judgement of all the 
ages, but the enlightening Spirit of Christ, who leads 
us into all truth. The question, then, how shall we 
distinguish between the things which are true and 
those which are not true in the Bible, is answered by 
the Bible itself. The Spirit is promised to those who 
believe in Jesus, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit which, 
as an inward light, leads men into truth. 

3. That desperate question 1 which is raised by one 
who is rudely awakened out of the dogmatic slumber 
by the recognition that the Bible does not claim 
infallibility : If the truth is not given me in the Bible, 
where is it given ? may now receive at least a pro- 
visional answer. The truth is given you in the Bible, 

1 See p. 117. 
124 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

viz., Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life, and the 
Spirit of Truth imparted to those who believe in Him. 
That truth is a vital and spiritual reality assimilated 
by faith, not a document, a letter, a series of statements 
or propositions. It cannot be thrown into any inclusive 
and satisfactory formulae. The Bible itself abstains 
from thus formulating and crystallising truth. If at 
one stage of development ten commandments are given, 
as in Exod. xxxiv., or Exod. xx., at another stage these 
are revised and simplified into a plain statement of God's 
requirements by such prophets as Micah, Jeremiah 
and Ezekiel ; the stress is laid on the inward state of 
the heart, on doing justly, loving mercy and walking 
humbly with God. If in the opening of the Gospel 
there is a new law, the Sermon on the Mount, trans- 
forming the old law fundamentally, that new law 
quickly passes into a comprehensive principle, Thou 
shalt love God, and thy neighbour as thyself. And 
presently its whole motive and dynamic are found in a 
relation with Jesus Christ, established by faith. And 
this again is soon represented as an unction of the 
Holy One, the Spirit within, which makes the soul 
independent of earthly teachers. 

Nowhere does the Bible allow us to rest for long in 
anything like a formula, a law, a creed. Everywhere 
it leads us to a living spiritual experience which 
regenerates, recreates, and endows the soul with direct 
knowledge, wisdom and goodness. 

The Church, desiring to repair what it took to be 
the omission of the Bible, compiled the Creeds, the 
Nicene, the Apostolicum, the Athanasian. But the 

125 



My Belief 

wisdom of the Bible is confirmed by this fact, that the 
Creeds are outworn ; their language becomes antiquated; 
their perspective is distorted. Their strictly human 
origin reveals itself; the suitable language of the 
fourth, or the fifth, or the eighth century is found to be 
unsuitable for the twentieth. 

Meanwhile the Bible, with its insistence on a spiritual 
fact, and the verification of truth in a spiritual experi- 
ence, is never out of date. It continues to lead men to 
Christ, as a living bright reality ; in that way it endues 
men with the Spirit. And as they are led by the Spirit 
and walk in the Spirit, they are able to use the book 
fruitfully for themselves and for the world. 

The loss of the dogma of infallibility does not there- 
fore imply that we cease to find the truth in the Bible. 
So far from that, it leads us to find the truth in the 
Bible for the first time. While we are under the illusion 
that, as a matter of piety, we must regard everything in 
the Bible as true, it is almost impossible to find the 
pure truth of Christ. For, to speak frankly, there is 
much in the Bible contrary to the Spirit of Christ. And 
we may be in the same bondage as those literalists of our 
Lord's time, to whom He said : " Ye search the Scrip- 
tures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these 
are they which testify of Me. But ye will not come to 
me that I may give you life." But when we recognise 
Christ as the truth, and find that truth in the Bible, we 
no longer suppose that what is inconsistent with Christ, 
even though it be in the Bible, is true. 

Thus the effect of criticism on the Bible has not been 
to discredit its truth, but to liberate it. The dogmatic 

126 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

handling of the Bible, let us say by Calvin, prevented 
its truth from shining and operating. To Calvin every 
part of the book was equally true, equally authoritative. 
He will as lief cite a passage from the Law, as from the 
Gospel. He does not regard the words of Jesus as 
God's word any more than the words of Moses, or of 
Ecclesiastes, or of Solomon's Song. What a gruesome 
system results from this ignorance ! What a caricature 
of God comes out from this confused combination of 
the varying and developing conceptions of God which 
covered a thousand years of progress ! Calvinism, with 
all its strength and beauty, is regarded, and regarded 
justly, as an evil dream. It is the outcome of a false 
method, a misunderstanding. It is the system which 
comes from the dogma of the Infallibility of the Bible, 
substituted for the Infallibility of the Church. Criticism, 
in showing what the Bible actually is, has delivered 
mankind from that nightmare, the conception of a God 
who serenely creates men for reprobation and eternal 
torment. 

"Criticism," as Professor Gwatkin says, "has done 
as much as even science to deepen and widen our 
conception of the knowledge of God." 1 

If we find it necessary to recall the fallibility of 
critics, if we are disposed to smile at Professor Cheyne, 
rewriting the Old Testament, with the clue of 
Jerahmeel, to show that Babylon and Egypt and 
Palestine and everything referred to in the book are 
to be sought in a small district of southern Palestine 
and northern Arabia ; if we are outraged by articles in 

i " The Knowledge of God," ii. 285. 
127 



My Belief 

the " Encyclopaedia Biblica," which give the impres- 
sion that no words of Jesus are sure except those which 
show his limitations; and that the four acknowledged 
Epistles of Paul cannot be written by him ; let us 
retain our judgement, our clear sight. We must not 
be made extravagant by the extravagances of critics. 
Isolated from life and mankind, in the rarefied air of 
the study and the lecture-room, individual critics may 
carry their method to an extreme which discredits the 
method. But let us grasp the fact, that a cautious, 
sober and reverent criticism, such as we have developed 
in our English and Scottish theological schools, is a 
gain to the understanding of the Bible, and a vindica- 
tion of its religious value. 

The following extract from the Expository Times 1 may 
illustrate the positive effect of the Bible, even of the Old 
Testament, when approached in the critical way : — 

"About the year 1868, I made the acquaintance at Biarritz of a 
French Protestant gentleman, who told me the story of his conversion. 
Nominally a Protestant, but utterly indifferent, he was studying 
painting at Naples. He found that he had mistaken his vocation ; his 
real bent was for languages. Taking up philology, he began to read 
the Hebrew of the early chapters of Genesis for linguistic purposes only. 
Soon a deeper interest was awakened. He had studied but a few 
chapters before he became convinced of the truth of revelation. He 
spent a great part of his subsequent life in endeavouring to improve the 
French of the Old and New Testaments. 

" A few years afterwards I made acquaintance at the meeting of the 
Societe des Sciences et des Arts de Bayonne, with M. H. du Boucher, 
who afterwards founded the Societe de Borda, at Dax. He was 
nominally a Roman Catholic, really an unbeliever. Fond of languages, 
he took up the study of the Hebrew of the early chapters of Genesis. 
On February 17th, 1875, he read at a meeting of the Bayonne Society, a 
1 Vol. xviii., No. 11, p. 524. 

128 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

paper entitled ' Le Chapitre V de la Genbse et l'Archeologie Pre- 
historique.' .... There were present two of the cathedral clergy, 
myself, several Roman Catholic laymen, a Jew, and some militant free- 
thinkers. The purport of the paper was to show that the names of the 
patriarchs might be tribal, or refer to inventions or steps in civilisation. 
M. du Boucher spoke of his joy in finding science confirm revelation ; 
still he offered to submit to the higher authority of the church, if his 
interpretation were in error. Then the discussion broke out. The 
freethinkers objected that the whole method was faulty and a priori, 
that it was impossible otherwise to arrive at such conclusions. M. du 
Boucher insisted that he had gone to the study without preconceived 
opinions, that he had gathered his convictions from the study. The 
clergy maintained that such a result was possible sans arriere penset 
religieuse ; that the Catholic church has not imposed any interpretation 
on this chapter, and that opinion on it is altogether free. M. du 
Boucher courageously faced the storm, and maintained the reality of 
his conversion. 

" I think that Archbishop Leighton mentions the case of a man being 
converted by hearing this gen. v. read in Glasgow Cathedral ; but this 
was from the repetition of the words ' he died,' and from a different 
order of ideas. Do not such facts show us that the convictions of faith 
and the demonstrations of science lie in different mental planes ? The 
demonstrations of science can be taught with fitting opportunity to any 
capable of understanding them. Science is communicable. No one 
knows what will, or what may, bring the conviction of faith home to 
one's mind. What will have the deepest influence on one man will 
have none at all on another. 'The Spirit bloweth where it listeth.' 
All means are powerful in His hands. 

Sare, Basses Pyr£n£es. Wentworth Webster." 

These instances serve to show that the Bible, read 
without prejudice or bias, is well able to establish its 
character as divine revelation. Indeed, nothing is 
needed but the careful perusal, to reach even the highest 
conception which has ever been entertained of the Book. 
It is true that if a person like Tom Paine, or his modern 
imitators, searches the book simply to ridicule and 
depreciate it, the strong parti pris may blind the eyes to 
its beauty and significance. " You see that buzzard," 

129 1 



My Belief 

said a Christian, on a Mississippi steamer, to a man of 
this type who had been pulling the Bible to pieces, " it 
takes no notice of the sunlight, of the cultivated fields, 
or of the broad river ; its only interest in the landscape 
is any carrion which its searching eye can detect." No 
doubt it is possible to read the Bible in this way, to 
dwell on any signs of scientific or historic blundering, 
to cite the instances of a backward moral development, 
the precepts or practices which had sway in the twilight 
of religion, the infirmities of Bible characters, the limita- 
tions of even the greatest writers. But the fault in that 
case is in the reader ; no one can prevent a self-imposed 
blindness. That same reader, finding the Bible for 
the first time, and not connecting it with a religion 
which he is interested to attack, reading the pages 
innocently and curiously, would receive a totally 
different impression. He would be enthralled with the 
interest of the stories, surprised by the nobility of the 
poetry, moved by the sense of another, a spiritual, world, 
which pervades the book. Coming to the story of Jesus, 
he would at once recognise that there is the greatest, 
the loftiest, the truest that the world has known ; and 
he would sympathise with the men who set about the 
task of proclaiming Him to their kind. The prejudice 
which blinds men to the Bible is partly dogmatic and 
partly of course moral. No one living an unclean life, 
and indulging in the pride of the human heart, or the 
bitterness and contempt of man, which is the blight of 
human nature, can read the book without discomfort. 
The readiest mode of peace is to leave it unread, or to 
denounce it and deride it. It holds a mirror up to the 

130 



Can we Believe the Bible? 

heart in a singular way and forces a man to reflect. 
But in the main the prejudice which blinds men to the 
Bible is the result of the dogma, which represents it as 
a book written by God, and guaranteed against every 
kind of error. To read a book which is presented to 
us on those terms, one must blind one's eyes ; if some 
blind their eyes to its faults, others will blind them to 
its merits. The blind dogma demands blind readers ; 
the pious must be blind, so must the impious. 

Adam Bede, we are shrewdly told, preferred reading 
the Apocrypha, because there he might exercise his own 
judgement about the truth of what he read. If he read 
the Canonical Scriptures, his judgement must lie 
dormant. No device could be found more calculated 
to destroy the interest of a book than a dogmatic 
proviso of this kind. Unjustified, as we have seen, 
by the Bible itself, it is condemned by the effects which 
it produces. 

No, let the reader read, without theory or pre- 
conceived idea, of what the Bible should be, and all 
will be well. Let him read, as Dr. Courtney does, in 
his " Literary Man's Bible," accepting the current 
critical results, and treating the book simply as litera- 
ture. Let him endeavour to look at these writings just 
as he would look at writings of a similar antiquity, and 
handed down to us in a similar way. The Bible will 
produce its own effect ; no candid mind can miss it. 

But the one fear, the fear that is largely realised 
to-day, is that we should give up reading the Bible, 
should leave it on a shelf, under the impression, either 
that we know it, or that it is not worth knowing. The 

131 1 2 



My Belief 

supreme precept in reference to it, far more important 
than any directions about the method or the presupposi- 
tions of the study is — Read it. 

No difficulties in the Bible are worth considering 
compared with the difficulties of those who cease to 
read it. Out of their lives has gone not only a great 
intellectual discipline, a touchstone of literary taste, a 
handbook of ethics and conduct, but the master instru- 
ment for holding the soul in communion with God. 
They become weak and impoverished and blind, or 
dark with superstition and ignorance. 

Read the Book. Consider that here you have the 
greatest book in the world, the fountain-head of modern 
literature ; remember the past, the souls that have been 
fed and strengthened on this spiritual food, the deeds 
that have been done, the lives that have been led, by 
its inspiration. Hold the Book close, and aim at 
mastering it. Learn its contents, understand its spirit. 
Knit it to your life, and shape your life by it. More 
and more it will convince you that if the dogmas about 
it are extravagant they err, not in magnifying it unduly, 
but only in magnifying it in a mistaken way. 

Books recommended: "Inspiration and the Bible," "Revelation 
and the Bible," "The Word of God," by R. F. Horton (T. Fisher 
Unwin) ; "The Oracles of God," by Professor Sanday (Longmans 
& Co.); "Who Wrote the Bible?" by Dr. Washington Gladden 
0- Clarke & Co.). 



132 



VII 

IS THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IDENTICAL 
WITH BELIEF IN MIRACLES? 

As we learn to take a true view of the Bible the 
difficulty which the modern mind feels in accepting 
the miraculous is considerably lessened. We are not 
required to believe a miracle simply because it is 
recorded in the Bible. Historical and literary criticism 
alike teach us to discriminate, to recognise that some 
miraculous stories in the Bible rest on a much stronger 
foundation than others, and that many make no claim 
at all to our belief as literal occurrences, but are merely 
the dressing and illustration of certain religious truths. 
A miracle in the Bible is to be treated like a miracle else- 
where ; it is to be treated, accepted or rejected, entirely 
on the evidence which is offered for it. 

But while we are no longer asked to believe a miracle 
simply because it occurs in the Bible, a wider acquaint- 
ance with the facts, the psychic and the physical facts, 
which come within our observation, makes us increas- 
ingly wary of saying that a thing could not happen, or 
that it did not happen. Matthew Arnold's curt dogma 
in the seventies, when the conflict about the super- 
natural was entering on an acute stage, " Miracles do 
not happen," sounds very thin and silly. It would be 
just as true to say that miracles are always happening, 

133 



My Belief 

and the great difficulty is to determine what is not 
miraculous. For example, when the modern physicist 
assures us on experimental grounds that the atom, itself 
so infinitesimal as entirely to elude our vision, is in- 
habited by electrons, which relatively to itself are so 
small that " the electron ranges about in the atom as a 
mouse might in a cathedral," can we any more deny 
that matter, which is entirely composed of atoms, is 
itself a miracle ? It defies, if not the belief, at any rate 
the imagination, of the ordinary mind quite as much as 
any miracle contained in the Bible. Curiously enough, 
it is science itself that now makes us hesitate to dis- 
believe the miraculous, science which in the seventies 
was so sure that miracles do not happen. 

While, therefore, the trend of modern criticism has 
given us a greater freedom in handling the miraculous 
stories in the Bible, the trend of modern science has 
revealed to us that much, very much, is possible, which 
once was considered impossible ; in Augustine's remark- 
able and prescient phrase, miracle is not contrary to 
nature, but only to what we know of nature (non contra 
naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura). 1 We may 
express the position which we are now bound to take 
up in a formula : While the miracles in the Bible 
cannot be believed simply because they are in the Bible, 
they cannot be rejected simply because they are 
miracles. 

"The great difficulty, it may be said," writes Pro- 
fessor Sanday, " is to make both ends meet, on the one 
hand the presuppositions of science, and on the other 
1 ' ' The Life of Christ in Recent Research, ' ' Professor Sanday, p. 216. 

134 



Christian Faith and Miracles 

hand the presuppositions of religion ; on the one hand 
the data of philosophy, and on the other hand the data 
of history." * 

The effort to make both ends meet certainly involves 
giving up a great deal which has been very confidently 
believed for many ages ; all progress in knowledge 
involves such surrenders. But the effort does not involve 
givingup the miraculous, or even the miracles of the Bible. 

What is a miracle ? If we define it as an event 
which demands a violation of natural law, we justify 
the denial which science makes of the miraculous. 
There can be no violation of natural law ; there can 
only be the suspension of one natural law by the opera- 
tion of another. For instance, it is a violation of 
natural law, that the stones of the quarry should rise 
into the columns and dome of St. Paul's ; but the 
violation is merely the intrusion of human intelligence, 
will, and energy. But if nature includes volition, the 
building of St. Paul's does not violate the laws of 
nature ; it is only that the law of gravitation, which 
forbids stones to rise, is suspended by the human energy 
which raises them. 

What then is a miracle ? It is not a violation of natu- 
ral law, but it is the modification of one or another law of 
nature by the intrusion of a law, which though spiritual 
is not unnatural. To speak of supernatural is a mis- 
use of terms ; a correct definition of nature includes 
the spiritual, the facts of psychology, mental processes 
and the action of will. We may speak of the super- 
human ; indeed we are bound to recognise an intelli- 

1 Op. cit., p. 203. 
135 



My Belief 

gence, a will, at work in things, which is far above our 
own — that is, superhuman ; but we have no right to call 
it supernatural. Nature from the first embraced all that 
has ever been called supernatural. The evolutionary 
process, the development of species, the globe as a 
place of human habitation, and the human beings 
adapted to it, every will, or mental energy, nay every 
leaf thrown out by a tree in spring, is " supernatural." 
Nature itself includes the so-called supernatural. But 
by a miracle is meant an occurrence in nature, and 
according to natural law, which calls our attention to 
the work, the purpose, the will of the superhuman being 
in nature. Whatever establishes a belief in God, and 
shows us His will, is a miracle. Whenever the natural 
order speaks intelligibly and proclaims itself as the 
work of God, that is miraculous. A miracle occurs 
when the soul is in contact with God. It is not super- 
natural, for God is in the world and in man from the 
beginning ; it is only superhuman, man comes into 
touch with the Being, akin to him, but so far above 
him ; within the plane of nature the finite and the 
infinite meet. 

Now, as we begin to see that a miracle is simply the 
experience of this contact between man and God, we are 
perfectly sure that miracles have happened, and do 
happen. Every time a prayer is answered a miracle 
occurs. Every time a gifted soul, by its intense realisa- 
tion of God brings others into a similar experience of 
God, the primal miracle of revelation is repeated. All 
genuine religion is miraculous, it is the discovery in the 
field of nature that there is a superhuman, it is the 

136 



Christian Faith and Miracles 

intercourse of the human with the superhuman. 
Everything that authenticates or reproduces the 
genuine religious experience is a miracle. The greatest 
and yet the most frequent miracle is a noble religious 
personality ; a person who walks as seeing Him who is 
invisible, who lives in communion with God, who 
brings into human life the sense of God, the will of 
God, the thought of God. 

The great miracles of the Bible are the portraits of 
such personalities, the persons themselves, no doubt, for 
those who saw and heard them, but for us the delinea- 
tion of them. Here legend may serve a purpose second 
only to history ; an ideal creation may be as miraculous 
as a biography. In the Bible both kinds of miraculous 
personality abound — we may watch with composure 
the attempt of criticism to settle which is which. 
Abraham is a miracle, so is Moses, so is Samuel. In 
these men God becomes a reality to men, His purpose 
is disclosed, His will is done. The prophets whose 
authentic writings are before us, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, 
Micah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Ezekiel and the Second 
Isaiah, Zechariah and Haggai, these are all miracles, 
human minds in which God becomes distinct and 
articulate, through which the thought of revelation is 
worked out. John the Baptist is such a mind, calling 
men to repentance and announcing his successor. 
Jesus is the supreme miracle of history. In Him God 
was manifest as never before or since. His conscious- 
ness, as it is mirrored in the Gospel narratives, produces 
a unique impression on us ; sinless, He wars against 
sin ; in virtual identity with God, He lives in hourly 

*37 



My Belief 

dependence on Him ; God is in all His thought and 
action, in the yearning love over sinful men, in the 
purpose to save them, in the offering of the cross by 
which they were saved. This personality is the miracle. 
To it the world recurs in every succeeding generation 
with fresh wonder. Paul is a miracle ; the way in 
which he was possessed by Christ, and began to preach 
whom he persecuted ; the passionate realisation in his 
person of Christ crucified and risen ; the transforming 
effect of his evangel ; this is a miracle, because in this 
evangelic experience God meets with a man in a way 
which makes other men through all generations meet 
with Him. The writer of the Fourth Gospel is a 
miracle, for in his personality Jesus is presented to all 
ages as the Way, the Truth and the Life. The same 
may be said of the writers of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
and the Apocalypse. Indeed the meaning of the canon 
of the New Testament is that it is a collection of the 
writings of those who, through knowledge of Jesus, 
or faith in Him, have this miraculous power of 
communication. 

It will be seen then that the Bible is full of miracles, 
authentic and indisputable miracles, the greatest kind 
of miracles, viz., the personalities in which the super- 
human Being comes into contact, communion, and 
communication with men. 

But when this point is established — and it is so 
obvious, that, however we may cavil at the God who 
thus reveals Himself, it is not possible to deny the 
reality of these persons, nor the justice of calling them 
miracles ; nay, the more unbelievers reject them as 

138 



Christian Faith and Miracles 

incredible, the more miraculous they are proved to be — 
the authenticity of miraculous stories occurring in the 
Bible becomes secondary : they may be handled with 
perfect freedom, and accepted solely on the evidence. 
These stories occur in strata, and are to be regarded 
with varying degrees of certitude according to the strata 
in which they occur. The story of the Creation, the Fall 
of Man, the Deluge, are not history; that is to say, they 
are not the work of contemporaries or based upon 
collated documents. There is no critical interest at 
work in them. Their interest is purely religious. The 
beautiful stories of the Patriarchs are not history either. 
Rich as they are in spiritual teaching and revelation, 
they do not profess to be biographies. The tales of 
ancestors, treasured up and repeated from generation 
to generation, are miraculous when they convey the 
sense of God, and the truth of God ; but particular 
miracles occurring in them do not, and cannot, offer any 
evidence which compels belief. 

The miracles of the Exodus are historically vouched, 
if Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. But 
when the Books of Moses are shown to be works of a 
later date, incorporating the traditional story of the 
events and of the legislature, the miracles must be 
treated just as we treat such stories in other narratives 
removed by a great distance of time from the events 
recorded. No miracle in the Pentateuch is so wonder- 
ful as the man Moses himself, his work, his legisla- 
tion, his power to stamp his faith on his people for 
ever. If the miracles in the Pentateuch are no longer 
matter of faith, by believing or disbelieving which we 

139 



My Belief 

are saved or lost, the later view of them is not based 
on the ground that they are incredible, but only on the 
fact that they are not historically certified. 

The group of miracles which attach to the mission of 
Elijah and Elisha must rest on contemporary records ; 
they occur in historical books, which rest on documen- 
tary foundations. That Elijah witnessed for God by a 
series of acts which carried crushing conviction to his 
time, may be considered indisputable. No person in 
history is more real or certain than he, as Wellhausen 
showed in his famous " Prolegomena." If then we 
hesitate to impose faith in the miracles recorded as a 
sine qua non of Christian belief, it is only because the 
duplicate story of Elisha, and the style of the Elijah 
narrative, irresistibly suggest the saga of popular 
wonder. Everything shows that Elijah was great and 
his message was real ; but that greatness throws a mist 
of legendary glory about the details, which defies a 
critical analysis. 

" It was never intended," says Professor Sanday, 
"that we should take literally such things as Jonah and 
the whale or the celestial journeys of Ezekiel. That 
these things should have been taken literally at different 
periods in the history of the Church does not affect 
the matter ; because from the first the stress lay upon 
the moral lesson conveyed and not upon the reality of 
the occurrences as history." 1 

Much the same remark may be made about the Book 
of Daniel. Only a reader blinded by dogmatic preju- 
dice could take the stories, composed to illustrate trust 

1 " The Life of Christ in Recent Research," p. 212. 
140 



Christian Faith and Miracles 

in God and His power to save, for actual occurrences in 
history. 

On the other hand, the miraculous events in the 
autograph works of the prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and 
the rest, have the strongest testimony which can be 
given to any facts, the witness of contemporaries and 
eye-witnesses. 

In the New Testament the same kind of certitude 
attaches to the miracles which St. Paul was conscious 
of performing. His works of healing, the visions 
which gave him support or brought him the truth, the 
charismata which were manifested in his churches, are 
precisely as proved as the miracles, very similar in 
character, which occur in the matter-of-fact journal of 
John Wesley. 

Sir W. M. Ramsay has given us strong reasons for 
believing that the miracles of the Acts of the Apostles 
rest on the same sure foundation. The " we-narra- 
tives " show that Luke — that he was the author is 
more and more allowed — was on the spot and wit- 
nessed, for example, the miracles wrought in Melita. 
And this first-hand testimony in parts gives a measure 
of assurance for those events at which Luke had not 
been present, twelve or twenty years before. 

The miracles of the New Testament are only proved 
by direct eye-witnesses, if we can be sure of Matthew's 
part in the first Gospel and of John's authorship of the 
fourth. With the uncertainty which still attaches to 
these points we should not say that the miracles of our 
Lord are historically established. He, Himself the 
great miracle, is as sure as records can make Him, and, 

141 



My Belief 

indeed, much surer, for His reality and work rest 
on a continuous and present experience. But no wise 
apologist, aware of the nature of evidence and of the 
evidence of Christianity, would identify the faith in Jesus 
with belief in the miracles recorded in the Gospels. A 
devout and earnest Christian like Dr. Abbott, seeing no 
difficulty in believing in miracles if properly evidenced, 
does not accept the miracles of the Gospels. In the 
future there will be multitudes in the same position. 
Christ is placed beyond dispute, because no ingenuity 
of man could have painted the picture of a person at 
once human and superhuman, which emerges from all 
the four Gospels. But the unconscious correctness in 
tracing the lineaments of the Son of Man does not and 
cannot guarantee the correctness of every event handed 
down in the tradition of His life. Those who, like 
myself, believe in the miracles of the Gospels, will in 
the future more and more do so on the ground of a 
subtle internal evidence. The miracles of Jesus stand 
at a strange distance from the thaumaturgics of prophets 
and saints and religious founders in general. The 
miracles, childish and useless, in the Apocryphal 
Gospels, the miracles attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, 
the counter-Christ of the second century, and, above 
all, the puerile miracles which abound in hagiography, 
serve to throw the miracles of Jesus into startling con- 
trast. How would legend picture, or tradition transmit, 
wonders so unlike those which the popular mind 
demands or feigns ? His miracles are mostly acts of 
mercy, to heal the sick, or to feed the hungry, or to 
comfort the distressed. Without exception they are 

142 



Christian Faith and Miracles 

symbolical of deep spiritual truths. His economy of 
miracles, and his great reserve in advancing them as 
signs, or proofs of His mission, are very surprising, and 
certainly do not suggest the creation of fancy or design. 
He worked miracles of love. He constrained Nature 
into an evidence of the Divine beneficence and power. 
Out of His miracles as such, and taken by themselves, 
you can construct a gospel. Nothing of this kind can 
be said about the miracles attributed even to the 
Christian saints. Francis of Assisi, for instance, would 
be incomparably greater if all the miracles were struck 
out of the Fioretti. But the miracles of Jesus precisely 
harmonise with Him. They have, with one or two 
exceptions, the most natural air. Being such an one 
as He is, and is shown to be in the whole narrative, it 
seems inevitable that He would heal as well as teach, 
that He would feed as well as comfort, that He would 
exercise superhuman power over natural things, and 
that He would break the bars of Death. 

But it will be seen, that in this view the miracles take 
a reverse position to that which they once held. At the 
time they authenticated Him to rather dull eyes and 
sluggish hearts ; now He authenticates them. At first 
they called attention to the unique personality that was 
among men. Now that that unique personality is above 
question, we take the miracles as a not unnatural con- 
comitant of them. We do not believe in Him on their 
account ; we believe in Him on His own ; but on His 
account we may believe in them. What has been said 
about the miracles of Jesus holds also of those miracles 
which are involved in the Incarnation, the Virgin-birth, 

143 



My Belief 

and the Resurrection. No evidence could establish 
these miracles if they were recorded about an ordinary 
person ; but, on the other hand, slight evidence may 
establish them if the Person in question is so extra- 
ordinary that an unusual entrance and exit are 
congruous with such a life. Let anyone quietly con- 
sider what is implied by such a character as Jesus 
Christ, sinless and saving from sin, dependent on God 
and mirroring God, not only setting the example of an 
ideal human life, but supplying an impulse and a 
potency to every believer to realise such a life. The 
more the fact of Jesus is conceived as a concrete reality, 
entering into history and working through it, the more 
credible will it seem that He was not, and could not have 
been, " holden of death," and that His birth should 
have been by the direct operation of God rather than by 
the ordinary course of human generation. To many, 
perhaps most, believing minds that probability grows 
to a certainty; not only do the Gospel stories of the 
birth and of the Resurrection seem sufficient evidence, 
but, even if they were wanting, internal probability 
would establish the facts. The earliest Gospel, Mark, 
had no story of the Resurrection, for the closing 
passage, xvi. 9-19, is admittedly from another hand. 
If we had only that original Gospel, and no other, the 
experience and testimony of Paul in his authentic letters 
would be a sufficient proof of the Resurrection. The 
Gospel was from the first the announcement of a Risen 
Lord, the preaching of " Jesus and the resurrection." 
If our belief in the Resurrection does not depend on 
the narratives in Matthew, Luke, and John, it cannot 

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Christian Faith and Miracles 

be shaken by the very natural divergences of these 
accounts. The particular versions of an extraordinary 
event may be true or false, or more or less true, and 
yet the event may be certain beyond all possibility of 
cavil. That Christ rose from the dead, and was seen 
by the disciples, and convinced them of His resurrec- 
tion, life, and spiritual presence, is a fact as sure as 
anything can be in this world. But that does not 
require or demand that the disjointed stories of all that 
accompanied the rising on that third day should be 
correct. 

The Virgin-birth is not accredited with the over- 
whelming and substantial evidence of the Resurrection. 
How could it be ? What possible evidence could 
convince a determined denier of such an event ? If 
historical documents attempted to prove in detail that 
Joseph was not the actual father of Jesus, but that the 
child was produced entirely by the Holy Ghost, the docu- 
ments would be more curious than convincing. We 
have here a fact which from the nature of the case 
could not be proved to later generations. Accordingly 
Peter and John and Paul take the greatest pains not to 
rest their Gospel upon it, or to allow their hearers to 
confuse the certainty of Christ's divinity with so 
inscrutable a cause as the mode of His birth. The 
absolute silence of these greatest witnesses on the 
subject is the clearest guidance for putting the belief 
in the Virgin-birth in its right place. But, on the 
other hand, it is no reason for denying or even for 
questioning it. 

In the way of historical evidence no authority could be 

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My Belief 

better than Luke's. He is acknowledged to be among 
the most trustworthy of ancient historians. His asser- 
tion that he had carefully enquired, and learnt the 
facts from eye-witnesses, gives a value to all that he 
records, which cannot reasonably be discredited. The 
tradition which makes him a physician and a personal 
friend of Mary's is quite probable : in both capacities 
he would have exceptional means of estimating the 
mode of the Lord's birth. The evidence of the first 
Gospel is not so substantiated. But if the miracle of 
the Virgin-birth is given on the authority of Luke, it is 
of course supported by the testimony of Matthew, an 
earlier document. 

The credibility of the miracle however does not rest 
on documentary evidence, but on the nature of Jesus. 
If it is reasonable to suppose that a Man, who stands 
clean outside the common category of men, has a 
different origin from ordinary men ; if on other grounds 
Jesus is perceived to be a God-man, a revelation of God 
in man, for the purpose of saving men from their sins 
and bringing them to God, reason would demand that 
His difference from men should be shown in the nature 
of His birth, while at the same time His identity with 
men should be maintained. It is difficult to imagine 
how this logical necessity of the situation could be 
more finely and delicately met, than by the narratives, 
so exquisite in tone and colour and feeling, with which 
the first and the third Gospels open. 

The miracles of the Incarnation, therefore, like the 
miracles of Jesus Himself, are perfectly congruous 
with His character and His work. Superhuman they 

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Christian Faith and Miracles 

admittedly are, because the whole object of Jesus, as 
God-man, is to raise humanity above itself to His own 
ideal level ; but they cannot be called supernatural, for 
Jesus of Nazareth is a fact in nature, and being what 
He is, the Son of Man and the Son of God, it is in the 
highest degree natural that He should be born of the 
Holy Ghost, and that He should break the bonds of 
death. 

But another line of argument remains to be developed. 
It was the peculiarity of Jesus to slight His miracles, 
and to teach His followers that they should do greater 
things than He did. It was as if He opened to men a 
boundless prospect of higher activity, and Himself only 
led the way. The surest evidence of the miracles of 
Jesus is therefore found in the reproduction of them by 
faith in Him. We may say, that while for evidential 
purposes at the time many miracles were useful, for us 
in later times only those are of value which come under 
the category of " Greater works shall ye do, because I 
go to my Father." The miracles of healing and of 
saving are for this reason of peculiar value. The 
miracles of direct control over inanimate forces, like 
the feeding of the multitude, the calming of the storm, 
the walking on the sea, the withering of the fig tree, are 
only of value in so far as they encourage a heroic 
strength in prayer, and the conviction that all these 
uncontrollable forces are under the control of a living 
and loving God, who hears and answers prayer. 

The miracles of raising the dead combine the two 
kinds ; in these cases the healing is the direct exercise 
of the creative power that brings us into being. It is 

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My Belief 

to be noted that only the just-dead are raised ; the 
spirit which has recently left the body is recalled. 
Jesus does not encourage us to expect the restoration to 
life of the long-dead ; though in His transfiguration a 
light was shed on the fact that they live in another 
and a better sphere. These miracles, therefore, are a 
direct encouragement never to despair, even when all 
the signs of death have appeared. God can still bring 
the dead to life in answer to prayer and will do it, if it 
be wise and good. 

"Christian Science" has done a great service in 
recalling to us the integral part which healing plays in 
the original Gospel. Jesus always sends us to preach 
the glad tidings and to heal diseases. When along the 
lines of faith in Him we endeavour to heal disease, and 
even to recall those who are given over to death by the 
doctor, we strike on a remarkable vindication of the 
miracles of our Lord. And even in the control of 
inanimate forces without us, the power of prayer is so 
amazing — and carries so much farther than minds 
numbed by physical science conceive — that we should 
do well to expunge the word "impossibility" from our 
vocabulary, and fearlessly " in everything with prayer 
and supplication to make our requests known unto 
God." The life of prayer is lived in an atmosphere of 
miracles, and in it the miracles of Jesus become certain, 
because in a way they are always being repeated. 

Let me quote an instance from the mission field, 
which, though not what is called miraculous, illustrates 
the whole subject of miracles in and out of the Bible. 
Dr. Arthur Peill, a medical missionary of the L.M.S. 

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Christian Faith and Miracles 

in China, won the regard and love of the people by his 
devotion and skill and faith. When in the year 1906 
he was carried off by disease, worn out with his untiring 
labours, the people of 'Tsang Chiou were deeply moved, 
and the funeral was most affecting. On this occasion a 
native, named Yii, recited a poem which he had com- 
posed ; in it occurred the words : 

" For him ten thousand miles was nought, if he could bring blessing 
to 'Tsang Chiou. Many buildings he erected. He brought the dead to 
life and clothed dry bones with flesh." 

The phrase " he brought the dead to life," was not a 
poetical licence. Once in the middle of the night he 
was called up to see a man who had just died of diph- 
theria in the hospital inn. He found the man dead ; 
the heart's action had ceased for some time. Rapid 
tracheotomy and artificial respiration restored him to 
life. Dr. Arthur Peill raised the dead. 

The science of medicine and surgery is Christian 
Science, though it is now exercised by many who have 
no Christian faith. But in the hands of a Christian 
doctor, especially in heathen countries, it works 
miracles which produce the same effect as that produced 
by the miracles of Christ. 

Prayer is always working miracles. Prayer is itself 
a miracle, for, to revert to the definition of miracles as 
events which make us aware of God, all persistent and 
believing prayer has this result. Prayer in the name 
of Jesus is prayer which rests upon a living faith in 
Him as the revelation of God, the Way, the Truth and 
the Life. In such prayer " we have the things that we 
ask for." It is nothing to the purpose to say that we 

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My Belief 

also ask for things which are not given. The miracle 
would lose its edge if the asking and giving became 
ordinary and automatic like the beating of the heart. 
The point is, that again and again, indeed habitually, 
we ask for things which are entirely beyond our own 
control, in the name of Jesus. In distress we cry for 
material relief; it comes from unexpected quarters. 
In sickness we ask for health ; and we see a cure 
effected which amazes the doctors. We ask for the 
alteration of the character and conduct of those in 
whom we are interested ; and in surprising ways the 
petition is answered. All religious work, so far as it is 
truly religious, is done by prayer. We know that we 
are powerless, but power comes. We are conscious of 
not having influence over people, but the influence is 
exercised. The work of God goes on in the world 
always related to the conscious souls of those who pray. 
True, the outward observer sees nothing of this. 
The whole miraculous life of the Spirit goes on in the 
ordinary nexus of material causes and effects. It is 
useless to dwell upon the divine facts which, numbed 
by custom, he cannot recognise, but to those who are 
living the life of prayer the miracle is evident enough 
and indisputable. And, therefore, the real evidence of 
miracles is found by living the life of prayer. You too 
can work miracles in this way, you can see for your- 
self the obstinate facts of the world alter and dissolve. 
In the striking figure of our blessed Lord, you can say 
unto the mountain " Be thou removed and cast into the 
depths of the sea," and it will be done. All things are 
possible to him that believeth. 

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Christian Faith and Miracles 

The man of science, observing the succession of cause 
and effect in what he calls nature, and allowing his own 
spiritual activity to lie dormant, perhaps to become 
atrophied, may be incredulous of the will and the in- 
telligence which are at work in, and even produce, the 
very uniformities which he is examining. But let him 
begin to pray, to exercise his own religious faculty ; let 
him, just as he brings his will and intelligence to in- 
vestigate " nature," bring his will and intelligence to 
test that other part of nature which he has ignored — the 
religious part ; and quickly he too, like the saints in 
all ages, discovers the amazing power which is latent 
in him. He finds that he can affect other minds, even 
at a distance, that even physical forces are adjusted 
and directed at the instance of his prayer ; and as he 
recognises the miraculous in himself, he can understand 
it in the Bible, and more particularly in Christ. 



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VIII 
THE CHANGED UNIVERSE 

When the Bible was written, even its latest parts, 
and when the formularies of our religion were formed 
and stereotyped, the world was regarded in a way 
which has now by the advance of science become 
for ever inconceivable. The universe was, naturally 
enough, assumed to be as it appears to us. The earth 
firm on its foundations was the centre, the firmament 
above was an inverted cup, in the concave of which 
were fixed the heavenly bodies. Those lights of the day 
and the night were regarded as appointed for the pur- 
pose of illuminating and warming the earth. Man 
was the supreme object of the earth's existence, and 
it was a habitation arranged for his convenience. 
''Above" and "below" were perfectly intelligible terms. 
Above the firmament, in the region of the farthest 
planet, sat and ruled the gods or God ; below the 
surface of the earth, dimly suggested by profound 
caverns, or by volcanic eruptions, was the place of 
darkness or of fire. In this compassable system there 
was little difficulty in imagining God " coming down " 
to the earth, or Christ ascending up into heaven. Hell 
was the dark under-world, which Christ visited before 
His ascension. Christ will come again in the clouds of 
heaven and the saints will be caught up to meet Him 

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The Changed Universe 

in the air. The whole scenery and apparatus of 
religious ideas were thus phenomenal. The ncuvete of 
it all continues to be quaint and fascinating. Lan- 
guage still retains it in remembrance and use. 

But the whole framework of the picture is shattered, 
and when we employ the words which were suggested 
by it, we are conscious that it is only an accommodation. 
We say the sun rises and sets, but every modern child 
knows that the phrase refers only to appearance, and 
that in reality the illusion is only produced by the earth 
revolving on its axis. We talk of looking up into 
heaven, or even of going up there ourselves ; but every 
one knows that the eye looking up is not turned in the 
same direction for two successive seconds; that "up" 
in the course of twenty-four hours would mean the 
whole periphery of space. If our ordinary language is 
thus an accommodation, still more is our religious 
language, in which our creeds are expressed, felt to be 
merely symbolical ; while we continue to use the same 
phrases, we feel uneasily that the whole inner content 
has changed. 

Even before Copernicus altered the view of the 
universe, men were occasionally troubled with the 
doubt whether man after all was as central and as 
important as had been assumed. " What is man that 
thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou 
visitest him ? " was the sceptical enquiry of a genuine 
piety. Job finds the comfort for his sorrows and the 
silencing of his questions in the mere wonder and glory 
of visible things which make man look small and 
insignificant. But the stupendous revelation of the 

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My Belief 

universe, which science is making familiar to us all, 
seems to convict of presumption the tiny emmet, man, 
on this infinitesimal planet, who assumed that he and 
his affairs were the supreme interest of the universe. 

Even in the beginning of the fourteenth century, 
the wise poet who held in his disciplined brain all 
the science and theology of his time, could in perfect 
good faith represent the Inferno as the earth's centre; 
the purgatorial mount as rising from the antipodes, 
its summit piercing those concentric concavities in 
which the sun, moon and planets moved ; and Paradise 
dominant over all. Dante's Cosmos represents the 
science of his time ; it is not, as it seems to us, a free 
creation of the fancy, the mise en scene of his spiritual 
drama. No, such a universe was in Dante's view 
actually there ; in the midst of it he lived ; to its 
heights he hoped, out of its depths, to climb. 

But the days of Copernicus were at hand. And the 
universe of Dante became a quaint poet's dream. 
What a shattering blow comes to a religion bound up 
with a cosmogony, when science changes the whole 
conception of the world ! What a task is set to the 
real teachers of the religion, to disentangle it from the 
discredited cosmogony, to reconcile it to a new cos- 
mogony, or better still, to make it independent for ever 
of all cosmogonies ! 

Our study of the question, what the Bible is, should 
make it easy for us to recognise that the view of the 
universe presented in it lays no claim to finality 
and infallibility. I remember meeting a man, an 
engineer who had made the railways in Spain, who 

154 



The Changed Universe 

brusquely denied the Copernican system, on the 
authority of the Bible. He showed to me, with the 
aid of a plate, how the earth is flat, how the sun 
revolves round it, how the belief in antipodes is an 
illusion. Now if the reasoning of astronomers can be 
upset, and the splendid conception of the universe 
which they have given to us, as its "flaming walls " 
recede, can be shown to be only a fiction, that must 
be done on scientific and not on Biblical grounds. 
The Biblical view of the universe is a pre-scientific 
view. If it were treated as divine revelation it would 
preclude all scientific enquiry, for even the most ele- 
mentary use of a telescope modifies the Bible view, and 
any careful and reasonable observation of facts renders 
its language on cosmic phenomena misleading. 

If in Scripture we read that the stars will be shaken 
from heaven and fall to the earth, we know that the 
language is only that of appearance. Even the planets 
of our own solar system could not fall on the earth, 
for many of them are vastly greater than the earth 
itself. And the stars ? The idea of these innumerable 
solar systems, most of them far greater than our own, 
falling on to this tiny planet, becomes of course 
impossible. We must stretch our minds to form a 
notion of the distance of even our nearest neighbour 
in the stellar heavens. Language and numbers do not 
suffice to convey the fact. Let us suppose a mustard 
seed lying on the ground, and, at the distance of forty 
yards, an apple. The two objects represent the relative 
sizes of the earth and the sun. But suppose this little 
solar system of the apple and the revolving seeds to lie on 

155 



My Belief 

the field in an English county, the nearest fixed star, 
calculated on the same scale, would be another apple 
lying in the centre of Pennsylvania. This is the 
nearest of the solar systems. The light of Alpha 
Centauri can reach us in three years and a half, but 
other stars are so distant that their light has taken 
many centuries to reach us. For aught we know there 
are some so distant in the depths of space that their 
light is on the way to us and has not reached us 
yet. 

These are only words. The human mind can form 
no real conception of these magnitudes and distances, 
When we are told that in the little net of fireflies which 
we call the Pleiades, there are about four hundred solar 
systems, many of them inconceivably larger than our 
own, we accept the statement of science — we cannot be 
said to believe it, for it is incredible. The faith of science 
presents us with a universe which eludes us by its 
unimaginable magnitude, and renders the phenomenal 
language of the Bible and of the creeds quite out of 
date, the statement not of facts, but of appearances. 
We live in a universe changed since the Bible was 
written. 

Now the problem is, how to adjust our religious 
faith to this changed universe, how to read the religious 
truths as true supposing we substitute for the popular 
language about the world the exact language of 
science. 

Before grappling with the problem, it is well to 
notice Dr. Alfred Wallace's book, " Man's Place in the 
Universe." In that book the distinguished man of 

156 



The Changed Universe 

science maintains a most interesting argument to show 
that our solar system is the actual centre of the 
sidereal system. He argues that the universe, though 
so vast, is not infinite. Through the gaps in the 
Milky Way, which like a belt encompasses the whole, 
we look into dark and starless depths. Our solar 
system is in the centre ; and in that system he believes 
that our planet is the only possible abode of life. And 
of course we have no proof whatever that any other 
solar system is inhabited at all. 

If Dr. Wallace's arguments were substantiated we 
should find that the Bible view of man's place in 
nature is quite correct. Admitting the change in the 
view of the universe which science has made, the 
Biblical view of man we might accept. God's interest 
in the tiny planet arises from the fact that it is the 
scene of His one experiment of this kind. Here is the 
nursery of the moral, intellectual, spiritual life of the 
whole. Here God is working out His scheme of self- 
realisation in a world of finite spirits. Here the 
universe blossoms in intelligent beings who can rise to 
the companionship and sonship of God. In a spot of 
the universe so central and so significant, the Incarna- 
tion is not only intelligible, but necessary. God's self- 
realisation must come in a Person, if the race is to 
realise its possibilities. If the race has fallen and 
missed the mark, it must be restored, because there are 
not other worlds to fill the place, if this be lost ; there 
are not other denizens of eternity or potential sons of 
God, if God loses this His human family. 

This argument of Dr. Alfred Wallace, though it 

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My Belief 

may be contested, is well worth recapitulating and 
considering, because it reminds us of the absolute 
impossibility of disproving the anthropocentric position. 
However vast or infinite the universe may be, this globe 
must to itself be the centre of the whole. In vain we 
try to people other worlds, even the planets of our own 
system. The old Greek saw still holds : " Man is the 
measure." Our view of life and conduct cannot there- 
fore be affected by these cosmic researches. Neither 
the telescope nor the microscope can direct our feet in 
the path between two infinites. Science would do us 
a disservice, from which Dr. Wallace seeks to deliver 
us, by frightening us with our insignificance. The 
unveiled magnitude and complexity of the universe 
may easily paralyse us. The sight of Pan in the old 
mythology unbalanced the mind of man. The panic 
produced by the new Pan, the vision of an infinite 
universe, might be more deranging still. 

But Dr. Wallace's argument is not a sufficient support 
for faith. Faith must never rest on speculation which 
is liable to disproof. And the only real answer to the 
cosmological difficulty is to separate religion entirely 
from cosmic facts, and to find the foundation in 
realities which are liable to no change from the progress 
of discovery. 

Tennyson endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to help 
his generation to reach the securer position. No one 
felt more keenly the change produced in religious 
thought by evolutionary modes of conceiving the 
universe. But on the other hand he had a rare faculty 
of realising the significance of personality, and he 

158 



The Changed Universe 

encouraged us to set the soul over against even the 
mastering size and movement of cosmic things : 

" For though the giant ages heave the hill, 
And break the shore, 
And e . ermore 
Make and break and work their will ; 
" Though world on world in myriad myriads roll 
Round us, each with different powers, 
And other forms of life than ours, 
What know we greater than the soul ? " 

The later poems of the great laureate, if not quite so 
musical as the poems of his golden period, are more 
helpful in their teaching. He succeeds in assimilating 
the evolutionary ideas; he realises his position in 
the series of changes, by which the low forms of life 
rise to the human and to the divine. In the vast 
cosmic process he is undismayed, because he is 
conscious of approximating to God, and Christ takes 
a wonderful and unexpected place in the process. He 
recovers himself, as against the shock of the new 
science, by recovering Christ as the power of the old 
religion and the new. The significance of this later 
work of the great poet of the nineteenth century deserves 
a fuller recognition : 

" I have climbed to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the past, 
"Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire ; 
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the man is quiet at last 
As he stands on the heights of his life, with a glimpse of a height 
that is higher." 

Now it is in psychology that our time must find, and 
is already finding, the answer to the difficulties of 
cosmology. For practical purposes we are not con- 
cerned with the infinitude of the universe. God, as an 

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My Belief 

Infinite, is a necessary datum of thought, but not a 
factor of experience. With God as filling space and 
governing remote systems we are not concerned ; we 
are only concerned with God in contact with our 
own field of experience and life. If we are assured 
by conclusive reasoning that our planet was evolved 
out of star-dust, and our own life was evolved out 
of lower forms, we need not hesitate to accept the 
conclusion and to include in our conception of God the 
power which initiated and conducted that evolution ; 
but the Mighty Being of the evolutionary process is 
not religiously accessible to us. His ways may be 
partially known, but they are past finding out. We 
cannot know the Almighty to perfection. It is only 
God revealed in human life that can be personally 
accessible to human souls. It is God in contact with 
our own souls or with the souls of others, God as a 
reality of inward experience, that determines and must 
determine our character, our conduct, our belief in life 
or in death or in a life after death. The cosmic facts 
are irrelevant, except in so far as they are brought into 
the experience of the soul. For man, the soul stands 
and must always stand over against them as intrinsically 
greater than they. 

This is no self-glorification on the part of man; it is the 
necessary recognition of what he is, and the condition 
of all fruitful activity, whether of thought or action. 
The intelligence which apprehends the universe — 
and except as apprehended, the vast quantum is not a 
subject of thought at all — is necessarily greater than it. 
Greater is that which contains than that which is 

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The Changed Universe 

contained. Granted that the intelligence cannot solve 
this enigma wholly, yet to perceive it, to discuss it, to 
offer tentative solutions, places the intelligence in a 
position of superiority to the enigma itself. The 
thought, that piercing through phenomena, apprehends 
and constructs a world of reality, stands in the midst 
of its discovery, including it and above it. Thus 
psychology gives man a position more central than 
that which he had in the Garden of Eden. 

In the light of evolution man is the crown of the 
process, so far as it has gone. If he has lost the 
central position given to him by the Ptolemaic astro- 
nomy, he has gained a central position of another kind. 
Personality is the highest that has been reached, 
apparently the highest that can be reached ; and in the 
inference from his own personality to the personality of 
the Being who produced all things, he not only finds a 
God that is above all things produced, but he recognises 
in himself a kinship to that God. 

This recovery of man through psychological processes, 
following in so remarkable a way on the disturbing 
effect of evolutionary science, is singularly reassuring. 
It affords a securer foundation than any theory of the 
cosmos can offer; it also suggests irresistibly the Divine 
Mind that is at work in the succession and development 
of human ideas. 

The shifting of interest from the cosmological to the 
psychological plane gives peculiar weight to the argu- 
ment from the consciousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
It is God in Christ, God seen in the mirror of the mind 
of Jesus, God working in His activity, in His life and 

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My Belief 

in His death, that is the content of the Christian 
revelation. In the future we shall probably lay the 
whole stress of the evidence for Christianity on this one 
point. We shall cease to speak as if we knew every- 
thing, as if the Bible had revealed to us all that is said 
or implied within its covers, or as if the Church had been 
empowered to declare the truth on matters scientific, 
historical, or even theological. We shall confine our- 
selves to the one point : " This one thing we know, that 
in the person of Jesus we find God." There we see a 
human mind in serene and unclouded communion with 
God; an exquisite dependence on God resulting in a 
full expression of God's will. There we see God's 
thought of man, God's love for man, God's judgement 
on his sin, God's way of delivering him from sin. 
We shall fix our whole attention on believing in 
Christ ; and believing in Him we shall be admitted to 
the Christian experience of the cleansed heart, of the 
love of God shed abroad, of the life lived in holy 
obedience and loving service. This Christian experience 
will be, as it has ever been, Christianity, the goal that is 
aimed at, the evidence of the truth, when it is reached. 

This central fact secured, we may regard with com- 
posure the complete change of the circumstances and 
scenery in which the Christian redemption is set. 
Perhaps eventually we shall even alter our terminology, 
and read into most Scripture phrases the kind of inter- 
pretation that we involuntarily give to the statement, 
that the world was made in six days, or to the current 
speech about the sun setting and rising. 

A religion mediated through the personality of Jesus 

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The Changed Universe 

must live and work entirely within our own personality. 
Such questions as the origin and nature of the universe, 
or the locale of heaven and hell, or the state of the 
soul before birth or after death, do not belong to the 
sphere of religion, as understood in Christianity. They 
are curious discussions, which waste time and lead the 
soul astray. The account, for instance, which Herbert 
Spencer or Ernst Haeckel, gives of the universe as the 
subject of evolution, is of no religious interest to man. 
How the world came to be his habitation, and how he 
himself came to inhabit it, is a matter of curiosity, 
but not of religion. If he sprang out of the dust, if he 
is a developed amoeba, if he is now a physical organism 
closely related to the anthropoid apes, he has no interest 
in affirming or denying the fact. A man who justified 
a bestial or indecent act by saying that his descent was 
from the beasts would be clapped into prison, and justly 
punished. In the same way, a man who repudiates 
morality and religion because they have resulted from 
a. long development, is condemned in just the same 
mulct as if he repudiated them on the ground of being 
immoral and irreligious. In other words, practically 
speaking, these cosmical facts or theories are not im- 
portant. We have to live, to grow, to form our char- 
acters, to do our part in the world's work, as moral 
and religious beings. The truths of morality and 
religion may be only relative or provisional, but by 
them we have to live. 

It would no doubt be better now to interpret more 
closely such phrases as heaven and hell, and to use 
sparingly notes of locality in reference to them. Heaven 

163 L 2 



My Belief 

is above and hell is beneath, in a scale of spiritual 
values, but not in any physical sense. To go to heaven 
means to exchange the present mode of being in space 
and time for that spiritual mode of being which we 
know from the personality of Christ, from His resurrec- 
tion, and the manifestations which he gave of Himself. 
To say that heaven is "up there" has no meaning. 
The only relevant paraphrase for it is " to be with 
Christ." The assured hope with which a Christian 
dies, and the blessed visions which often come to a 
Christian in articulo mortis, give us some conception of 
the glory and the rapture, and the soul-sufficing rest of 
heaven. But a spiritual state cannot be described as 
above the clouds or in a distant planet. It is quite 
probable that heaven lies all about us, with closed gates. 
To go to hell, on the other hand, means that the soul 
immersed in things of time and sense, and without 
Christ, breaks from all the familiar surroundings, and 
enters unclothed a spiritual region without light, or 
hope, or joy. It is meaningless to speak of hell as 
being beneath ; the antipodes are beneath. Equally 
meaningless would it be to place it in the distant 
planets, in " chilling regions of thick-ribbed ice," or in 
the planets which are scorched by the too contiguous 
sun. It is far more probable that hell is on the earth ; 
we look into it whenever we come into contact with a 
thoroughly bad person. The slave-raiding of darkest 
Africa, or the government of the Congo State, the 
torturing desires and satieties of lust, the delirious 
dreams of a drunkard, the isolation of a haughty and 
loveless soul, are hell. 

164 



The Changed Universe 

Nothing is more futile than to speculate on prenatal 
conditions, on reincarnations, or on the state of the 
soul after death. Such speculations are morbid ; they 
often arise out of mental disease, still oftener they lead 
to it. No facts are ascertainable on these subjects. 
And airy structures built on fancy are fallacious while 
they stand, and ruinous in their fall. In nothing has 
Catholicism been so disastrous to the life of man as in 
its reckless constructions of dogmatic eschatology, which 
equally defy proof and refutation. Purgatory is pre- 
sented with the confidence of a geographical discovery. 
The power to shorten its duration is claimed by the 
Pope and sold for money or penance. To call this 
irreligious is far too mild a term. It is substituting 
dreams of the madhouse for truth, and the result 
appears in the tyrannical power of the clergy, and the 
degraded superstition of the people. 

But confining our thought to the reality of religion, 
viz., God revealed in Christ, and the life regenerate 
and holy which results from belief in Christ, can we 
say that religion in this solid and fundamental sense 
is affected by the enlarged view of the universe which 
science has forced upon us ? No, we cannot. Quite 
the contrary, when the central reality is grasped and 
established, when the personal relation with God is 
secure by faith in Christ Jesus, we shall find the 
universe as revealed by science more magnificent, more 
glorious, more worthy of God, than the crude and 
childlike view of it which is assumed in Scripture. 

Let us attempt an illustration. Suppose one of the 
green summer flies, which lives its brief life and enjoys 

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My Belief 

the sun on the leaf of a sycamore, travelling along 
the veins or the rims of the leaf, flying a few inches, 
falling from the tree to the ground, laying its eggs, and 
dying; suppose, I say, this tiny organism to become 
aware of the whole garden, or even of a whole park. 
Its little brain is bewildered for a moment by the 
incredible discovery. It had thought of God as the 
marvellous maker of the leaf and of the sycamore; 
it had worshipped Him for contriving His small world 
with such ingenuity. And now behold there are more 
sycamores than one, there are other trees besides 
sycamores ; the green grass rolls away and is lost in 
a distant horizon. At first his feelings are so bewil- 
dered that he thinks there can be no God. A God 
who made a leaf or a sycamore he could partly under- 
stand, but a God who made a hundred sycamores 
and other trees beside is beyond his utmost stretch 
of thought. But gradually he accustoms himself to 
the new idea. And then the God of the garden or 
of the park seems more worshipful than the God of his 
tree. His little sou) expands in the discovery of the 
larger God. . . . We must not be surprised that man, 
accustomed to regard his tiny globe as the chief of the 
works of God, and thinking of God for millenniums 
as the artificer of the little world which occupies his 
vision, has been staggered by the discovery that God's 
universe is to the world as the world itself is to a grain 
of dust. His anthropomorphism had limited him. He 
had trained himself to conceive a God large enough 
for the known effects, but the revelation of the vaster 
effects broke up his limited God like an old idol from 

166 



The Changed Universe 

the South Seas. His first resort in the shock was 
atheism. But in atheism he cannot rest ; his own soul 
forbids it ; the souls of others who have experienced 
God testify against it ; above all the soul of Jesus, 
the Son of God, renders it unnecessary. Recovering 
his belief in God, he begins to find that his discoveries 
have enlarged his idea of God, and that the new idea 
resolves many difficulties which beset the old. 

The God who works in the universe by evolution 
is a greater, a more wonderful, a more beneficent 
God, than a God who works by creative fiats. The 
provision and the design and the orderly development 
are so vast as to baffle our field of vision, but they 
mightily invigorate the mind. Working by evolution, 
by seonian laws which do not admit of hurry or brook 
delay, God will tolerate many incidents which are 
to us inexplicable. His apparent indifference, the slow 
growth, the waste by the way, are explained. 

If Christ was God's Son, manifested for our redemp- 
tion, why so long before He came ? If the end of 
the plan is to be perfection, why this delay ? If God 
is love, why does He let the individual suffer ? If He 
created all, why cannot He heal, rescue, deliver, every 
one from every incident or accident or disease of the 
world ? 

And the answer to these and to all similar questions 
is found in the greatness, in the infinitude of God. 
The God of evolution works on lines too great for us 
to follow Him in detail. The time involved mocks 
our little span. Only the vastness of the design 
assures its accomplishment, and the manifestation of 

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My Belief 

the wisdom and the love silences our misgivings where 
we cannot understand. 

'Oi|/e fxv\ot a\eov(Ti deol, a\4ov<Ti Se Kcirrd. 

And holding fast the clue of Jesus, centreing life in 
Him and in His obedience, we may become greatly at 
home in this extended universe, persuaded of the kindly 
intention and ultimate good of it all. The sorrow and 
the pain are clearly incidental, and not the end. The 
end is very good; no one can dwell habitually with 
Jesus, watching the Heavenly Father, who sends His 
sun and showers to the human family impartially, 
without conceiving an assured hope for the whole, and 
even for the individual. 

The Power which produced and orders this universe 
will not be baffled. He who strikes off human souls 
like the sparks from the anvil, prolific and untiring, can 
hold them in being, and carry them through death. 
There is room in the fathomless universe for all souls, 
which, says God, are His. The very grandeur and 
splendour of the mighty scheme are reassuring. We 
are not dealing with a man, good but limited, with a 
Hercules smiting the wrongs of the earth, perishing at 
length in its fires, or with a Prometheus, the beneficent 
helper of men, bound at last to the Caucasus, with an 
eagle gnawing his liver. No, we are dealing with the 
Infinite Power which makes and sustains the universe, 
not only the narrow belt of it within our range of vision, 
but the worlds beyond the telescope, and the infinitesimal 
perfections revealed by the microscope. The Father of 

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The Changed Universe 

our Lord Jesus Christ is the Maker of men, the Maker 
of men is the source and cause of all. 

There was a truth, a prophetic truth, in the idea of 
Professor Clifford, that the substitute for religion in the 
future would be cosmic emotion, the wonder and delight 
of an intricate and infinite and beautiful universe. But 
it was only a half-truth. Cosmic emotion is not a sub- 
stitute for religion; it is only a widening and deepening 
of a religious sense acquired in the proper religious way. 

The believer in Christ can view the universe with 
purged eyes and kindling heart. He can be well 
assured of the wisdom and love that run through it all. 
He looks forward ; the evolution reached a cardinal 
point with the coming of Christ ; it will reach another 
cardinal point with another coming ; it will reach a 
conclusion, noble and stable and satisfying. 

He cannot despair of society, of any nation, however 
retrograde, nor even of any individual. Braced by the 
vastness of things, he sees Christ's work in a large 
light. Certainly He will draw all men unto Him. The 
backward races, the degraded races, are not beyond His 
purview. The dead are within His reach. Heaven and 
hell are dread realities, but they are not final. When 
the end comes, all authority will be beneath His feet, 
whose right it is to rule. 

And with such cosmic prospects, the individual, in 
Christ, does not trouble for his own future life. He is 
not importunate for immortality. His religion does not 
turn upon the ambiguous future. He believes in Christ, 
because He is the truth; and he only believes in immor- 
tality because he believes in Christ. But he is well 

169 



My Belief 

assured about the future for himself, as for the world. 
Death is not a terror, but a kindly ordinance. If it is 
a shaded passage, it leads out into the light. 

Here, again, Tennyson gave a tuneful voice to the faith 
establishing itself, after the shock of a wider universe 
opening on the mind. The verses called " God and the 
Universe " close, or nearly close, his last volume. The 
swan sings as it dies. 

" Will my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your depths and heights ? 
Must my day be dark by reason, O ye heavens, of your boundless 

nights, 
Rush of suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites ? 

'• Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state, 
Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is 

great, 
Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the 

Gate." 



I/O 



IX 

HOW TO REGARD PRAYER 

The first enquiry should not be, Are prayers heard 
and answered ? but rather, What is Prayer ? We have 
to reckon with a broad fundamental fact, viz., that 
prayer is an instinct. Scepticism can cast suspicion 
on it, just as scepticism may question the reality of 
matter, or the freedom of the will, or the validity of 
knowledge ; but instincts defy scepticism ; they always 
recur. Men pray ; they have always prayed ; they 
always will. Men who have no belief in God will in a 
moment of stress cry " God help me ! " or in a moment 
of devilish anger, " God damn you ! " It is vain to 
attempt to root prayer out of human life. It did not 
begin with theology ; it was not imposed by churches ; 
it was always there. It springs up in human hearts 
like an irresistible fountain, which may fail in a drouth, 
but begins again after the rains. If the fountain of 
prayer were finally dried up, the heart of man would 
have ceased to be. 

Our instincts cannot be explained ; still less can they 
be explained away. It is an instinct which leads us to 
pray to God, before we know Him, that we may know 
Him, and after we know Him, because we know Him. 
That instinct may be crushed, or perverted, but not 
eradicated. If you demonstrate to a man the futility 

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My Belief 

of prayer, that will not prevent him praying. If a man 
has lived for years in the neglect of prayer, that will not 
prevent him from one day coming to himself and saying: 
" I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto 
Him, Father, I have sinned." 

Let us define prayer, with our eye on the common 
New Testament word for it, 7rpocr€vxn, which means a 
wish directed towards — what ? The object is not at 
first stated. Prayer is the psychological act by which the 
soul seeks and finds contact, conscious contact, or communion, 
with God. In the first instance it is not asking for 
anything, it is not petition ; all it seeks is God Himself. 
When it makes a request, there is always a preface; Let 
me find Thee, let me know Thee, then I will ask of Thee. 
Francis of Assisi, we are told, would frequently spend an 
hour or two in prayer on Monte Alverno, and the only 
word he would say would be " God," repeated at inter- 
vals. That is prayer, bare, elemental, essential prayer. 

The soul wants God. An instinct bids it seek Him. 
It waits for Him, uttering the name, pausing, listening. 
It begins to be aware of Him, and utters the name in 
wonder, then in obedience, then in worship. The 
music is on one chord, but there are great varieties of 
tone. " God, God, God ; how I want Thee ! I am 
hungry for Thee ! I would touch Thee ! " 

Even Paganism has, at its highest, thoroughly under- 
stood this. " Prayer is not a means of inducing the 
gods to change the course of things," we read in the 
De Mysteriis Mgyptorum, "but their own good gift of 
communion with them, the blessing of the living gods 
upon their children." 

172 



How to Regard Prayer 

Prayer is not the monopoly of Christianity, though 
Christian prayer differs from other prayer by being " in 
the name of Jesus." 

But the definition will not be complete unless it is 
understood that the contact with God is communion, 
that is, mutual contact. Prayer is not only the psycho- 
logical act by which the soul comes into contact with 
God ; it is also the condition of the soul by which God 
comes into contact with it. Prayer is God's opportunity 
with man. A prayerless man keeps God out. God 
cannot enter a man's nature unless the man opens the 
door and asks Him in. That is the sanctity of per- 
sonality which God always respects, which He made in 
order to respect ; only when the proprietor of the soul 
rises, opens, and asks God in, can He enter. 

If man is only useful, wise, successful, by the opera- 
tion of God in him and through him, and prayer is the 
act on man's part by which this operation proceeds, 
nothing more need be said in order to justify the 
instinct of prayer. It becomes an obvious duty to 
follow the instinct, to cultivate the power, to find the 
right method, the full content, the most effectual 
exercise, of prayer. 

Let us, however, for a moment, push the definition 
of prayer a little further, so that it may include petitions 
and intercessions, and those other parts which are 
sometimes mistaken for the whole. 

The psychological act, which we call prayer, implies 
an inwardness of experience, an introspection, a self- 
sounding. In exercising it you go down into what 
is now called the subliminal consciousness. The 



My Belief 



consciousness at a given moment is only the cork on 
the surface which shows where the vast drag-net is 
submerged. In prayer you enter into the depths. And 
there, wonderful as it seems, you come into com- 
munication with other souls. It is as if on the surface 
we are divided from men, but in the ocean depths we 
are united. Telepathic communications pass easily in 
that subliminal region even to those at a distance. 
Marconi's discovery has been always anticipated in 
this wonderful psychical fact. When, therefore, your 
prayer entertains a person, or a condition, even far 
away, without any visible communication, you are on 
the spot. Your succour, or your sympathy, is readily 
transmitted. Evidences of this truth are easily accu- 
mulated, but not easily written. You must explore for 
yourself, and confer with others, and the truth will be 
quickly established in your mind. Prayer, being a 
contact with God, is also a contact with men, and 
conveys to men all that can be conveyed through God. 

" The weary ones had rest, the sad had joy that day. They wondered 
how. 
A ploughman singing at his work had prayed, God help them now. 

"Away in foreign lands they wondered how their simple word had 
power. 
At home the Christians, two or three, had met, to pray an hour. 

"Yes, we are always wondering, wondering ' how,' because we do not 
see 
Someone, unknown perhaps, and far away, on bended knee." 

But the psychological analysis of prayer should only 
lead us up to this great discovery, that when we really 
pray, or, let us put it, when we pray in the name of 
Jesus, the almighty power of God is put into operation 

*74 



How to Regard Prayer 

to fulfil the requests. Our laws of nature must 
include this law, for it is one established as fully and 
inductively as any other law of nature. It is a funda- 
mental fact of the universe, or, if we prefer to state 
it in another way, it is the irreversible purpose of 
Almighty God, that whatever is asked in the name of 
Jesus shall be done. "In the name of Jesus" means 
according to the constant linguistic usage of the Bible, 
" in the person of Jesus." That is to say, when we are 
in Christ, pardoned and reconciled to God by faith in 
His sacrifice, and united with Christ, as the branch is 
in the vine, so that the ideas of Christ come into our 
minds, and the purposes of Christ excite our desire, 
just as the sap rises through the trunk and runs 
through the branches, we pray in His name. Such 
prayers, being in harmony with the eternal and holy 
will, are answered. 

But it may be said, in that case would it not be more 
true to say that by prayer we bring ourselves into 
harmony with the will of God, than to say that we 
actually alter the course of events ? The answer to 
this question can only come from reflection. No doubt 
the main object of prayer is to bring ourselves into line, 
and harmonious line, with the will of God ; but the 
will of God is that our individuality should originate, 
should be not only an effect but a cause. As a cause 
acting against God or apart from God it is hurtful 
to others and destructive to itself. But when it acts 
with God, it does not cease to be a cause. It con- 
tributes. Thus when a single person prays " Thy 
kingdom come," the kingdom so far comes. When a 

175 



My Belief 

praying soul asks for some concrete point in the 
advance of the kingdom, the power of God is at work 
to realise that point. That point is that soul's con- 
tribution. 

Perhaps we may now raise the question of the 
answers to prayer, and while we may defend the 
instinct of prayer without laying stress on the answers 
to prayer, we shall hardly arrive at a true view of 
prayer unless we see with some clearness the place 
which answers ought to take in the practice of prayer. 

Let us frankly own that many prayers are to all 
appearance unanswered. Indeed it must be so; for 
men are asking for opposite and contradictory things. 
Some prayers are answered, but so doubtfully and 
indemonstrably that conviction is only carried to a 
few minds most directly concerned. A few prayers 
are strikingly and amazingly answered; and yet even 
these are seldom answered in a way to compel 
attention. 

Unanswered prayers are often as instructive as 
answered prayers. 

For instance, in that severest blow that ever befell 
Christendom, the Turkish taking of Constantinople, 
1453, the Greeks prayed, and trusted in the silly 
prophecies of the monks. They fought listlessly. 
When the walls were captured, the praying people 
took refuge in St. Sophia's ; but they were brought out 
and sold as slaves by the conquerors. The crucifix 
was carried through the streets with a janissary's cap 
on it, and the cry, " Behold the God of the Christians.'' 

In a singular way the heirs of that Byzantine 

176 



How to Regard Prayer 

Christianity, the Russians, have experienced a very 
similar defeat in our own time. Russia went to meet 
Japan under the auspices of St. Serafino, whose cult 
was furbished up for the occasion. Never were offered 
so many prayers — of a kind. When bad news came 
from the front the streets of Moscow were full of 
kneeling people, and the icons and the closed silver- 
bound Testament were carried round with endless 
genuflexions and incense-burning. But little pagan 
Japan disposed of the great " Christian" Power, in 
spite of all the prayers. 

In the fall of Constantinople and in the humiliation 
of Russia the same phenomena are presented ; a 
corrupt government, weakened with bribery and 
luxury and superstition, resorts to prayer as a bribe 
to God, hoping to buy victory by the repetition of 
phrases. And it is in vain. The scourge of Islam or of 
Japan is prevalent over prayer coupled with iniquity. 

This illustrates what has been said about "the name 
of Jesus." There is a permanent and infrangible 
moral order. True prayer asks that it may be main- 
tained. But prayer, so-called, which would infringe it, 
is powerless. 

It is most interesting to trace the answer to prayer 
coming after a delay which seemed to be a denial. 
Perhaps it is the limitation of our horizon which makes 
us sceptical. If we could range over the whole order 
from beginning to end, we might see prayer operating 
centuries hence, and things accomplished at the long 
last by souls in the " dark backward and abysm of time." 

For instance, Edward VI. , in dying, prayed : " Have 

177 M 



My Belief 

mercy on my soul, and save my country from Papistry." 
No prayer ever seemed so flatly rejected at the moment. 
His sister Mary ascended the throne, and her consort 
was Philip II. of Spain. The reaction to Papistry was 
sudden and irresistible. And yet the praver was 
answered by that reaction. Mary's Catholicism and 
Philip's imperious devotion to Rome made England 
Protestant. It was necessary that Hooper should die 
at Gloucester, and that Ridley and Latimer should at 
Oxford light the candle which should never be put 
out. From that Marian persecution dates the Protes- 
tantism of England. It was not Elizabeth, but Mary, 
who set the heart of this country against that bastard 
imperialism masquerading as the Church of Christ. As 
the holy and devoted servants of Christ, Hooper, 
Ridley, and Latimer perished in the flames by the 
policy of Rome, England saw that the Roman system 
is not Christian, but Antichristian. By the Marian 
reaction the whole genius of the people, the national 
greatness, the constitutional progress, were identified 
with the Reformation. Protestantism became, not only 
the security for religion, but the only bulwark of liberty. 
Philip II. brought a great fleet, under the blessing of the 
Pope, to subdue England. But 

"When lofty Spain came towering up the seas, 
This little stubborn land to daunt and quell, 
The winds of heaven were our auxiliaries, 
And smote her, that she fell." 

From T588 England was as conscious of miraculous 
deliverance from Rome as Israel was reminiscent of the 
Exodus. It was Protestantism and the English Bible 

178 



How to Regard Prayer 

which made the Puritan Revolution. And while the 
Stuarts were always coquetting with Rome, it was by 
the Protestant Prince of Orange that the final and 
glorious Revolution was accomplished, which made our 
modern England, and the world-wide Empire. 
Rome has gained complete liberty in England ; her 
bishoprics map out the land ; her convents and 
monasteries are more numerous than before the 
Reformation ; her schools and training colleges are 
supported by public money ; because England has 
no fear of her. England can only become Roman 
by ceasing to be English. There are many con- 
verts to Rome, but they are perverts from England ; 
they lose the national spirit ; their sympathies fall away 
from all that makes England great. The Irish and the 
French Canadians are the clearest evidence that Papists 
cannot be English. They are tolerated aliens in a vast 
Empire which is built up on the Bible, on individual 
freedom, on the truth of man's direct relation to God, 
which they as Papists cannot even comprehend. 

Thus the dying prayer of the young king is answered 
in a way which he could not have dreamed. The re- 
action, which seemed to be the rejection of his petition, 
was the chief means of fulfilling it. 

Many prayers are of this kind. It is as if God had a 
reluctance, not to answer prayer, but to make the 
answers too striking or distinct ; prayer is not to rest 
upon an inductive proof that it is answered, but on a 
much broader and surer foundation. Robert Louis 
Stevenson, whose recorded prayers are among the 
treasures of our devotional literature, came to the 

179 m 2 



My Belief 

conclusion that " no generous prayer is unanswered." 
But by this he did not mean that everything we ask for 
in prayer is granted. He was referring to that surer 
foundation, to which we will now turn our attention. 

Prayer is an instinct co-extensive with human nature. 
It is degraded and superstitious, or enlightened and 
spiritual, according to the religious ideas of those who 
pray. A savage propitiating a fetish, or a Catholic 
peasant beating a wooden image of the virgin, because 
it has not preserved his crops from blight, represents a 
very low type of prayer. Jesus in Gethsemane, saying 
"Thy will be done," represents the highest type of 
prayer. Prayer in the name of Jesus, if we understand 
what is meant by that, is the source of true prayer. In 
saying things about prayer we should refer them to this 
purest and noblest type, and should remember that the 
truths stated refer only in a diminished degree to the 
lower forms. A Buddhist praying by revolving a wheel 
with prayers written on it ; a Moslem rising from a 
hard bargain to perform his prayers in the shop, and 
returning to cheat his customer more effectually ; a 
Romanist reciting the endless repetitions of Aves and 
Paternosters in the Rosary ; these gain little good, and 
do less, by their superstitious exercises. Perhaps the 
Romanist least of all, because our Lord expressly 
warned us against vain repetitions, and gave us the 
simplicity and directness of the Lord's prayer in order 
to save us from them. The ingenious perversity of 
Rome uses this very prayer in the Rosary, for the very 
repetitions which Christ condemns. 

I was present once at Mass in a Wicklow village. 

180 



How to Regard Prayer 

The chapel was crowded with the people, high and low. 
Nothing could be more edifying until one looked into 
their faces. The priest explained from the altar that it 
was Sunday, and they must do an extra act of religion, 
read a pious book, or perform a good deed. But the 
easiest way to discharge the obligation was to stay for 
the Rosary, which would only take twenty minutes. 
This, he explained, consisted of the Lord's prayer, 
which was the best of prayers, and must be said thought- 
fully, not gabbled over, and of the Hail, Mary, for when 
they came to die they would want the blessed Virgin 
with them, and how could they expect her to come, if 
they omitted the Rosary. So many Paternosters, then 
so many Ave Marias, then more Paternosters, and then 
more Aves, and so on, for twenty minutes. After this 
edifying exposition the Rosary began. The priest and 
the acolytes rattled off the prayers at such a rate that 
no words were audible, and the thing was through in 
less than a quarter of an hour. 

I watched the people as they came out. There was 
no gleam of light, no trace of worship. Dull, listless, 
unintelligent, they had done what the priest had told 
them ; but no effort of faith or imagination could 
expect any benefit from the lifeless, mechanical per- 
formance, the more dead and deadening because the 
words of the Lord's Prayer were thus desecrated, and 
the simple woman who was our Lord's mother was 
thus exalted to a place of divinity. 

But, with our thought fixed on real prayer, i.e., prayer 
in the name of Jesus, we may say that the instinct of 
prayer is justified by these facts of observation : (i) The 

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My Belief 

effect which prayer has on those who use it ; (2) the 
effect which it has on those for whom prayer is made ; 
(3) the indisputable answers, which cannot be referred 
to the individual who prays, nor to other human beings, 
but only to a God who hears and answers. 

But these facts, let us note, should be arranged in a 
pyramidal form. The broad, sure basis is the effect 
which prayer has on those who habitually pray ; the 
narrowing layers of the pyramid are the observable 
effects on those for whom we intercede ; the apex is 
composed of those clear, sharp, and indisputable 
answers to prayer in which (though the instances are 
only few in each life) God's hand indisputably intervenes, 
and we know that He has done marvellously for us. 

1. Let us illustrate the effect of prayer on the soul 
by borrowing the words of two modern writers of 
fiction, the one American, the other English. For the 
facts of the spiritual life have, for better or worse, come 
into the common speech of men. The old primness is 
gone; and a novelist no longer hesitates to preach, or 
to handle the things of religion. 

James Lane Allen, in " The Choir Invisible," speak- 
ing of an old face which retains the freshness of Easter 
lilies, says : " For prayer will in time make the human 
countenance its own divinest altar; years upon years of 
fine thoughts, like music shut up within, will vibrate 
along the nerves of expression until the lines of the 
living instrument are drawn into correspondence, and 
the harmony of visible form matches the unheard 
harmony of the mind." 

This exquisite carving of the face of one who is 

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How to Regard Prayer 

habitually in prayer cannot be mistaken ; it is a sacra- 
ment, "the outward and visible sign of an inward and 
spiritual grace." The beauty gained in this way sur- 
vives the flight of youth, and is clearest in old age ; 
nay, after death, the face of a praying soul, in the still- 
ness and the expectation, shines with a light which 
seems at once to beam out of it and to fall upon it. 

Jesus in the act of prayer was transfigured; He 
became radiant and even his garment glistened. In 
their degree, all praying souls are so transfigured. The 
tranquil joy, assured against storm and sorrow; the 
suggestion of that peace which the world neither gives 
nor takes away ; the rest of the soul in the bosom of 
God ; the sense of the legions of invisible angels at 
hand; the circumambient atmosphere of another world ; 
these are the marks of those who are exercised in 
prayer. So Percival saw the eyes of the holy maid 
praying for the Holy Grail, 

" Beyond my knowing of them beautiful, 
Beyond all knowing of them wonderful, 
Beautiful in the light of holiness." 

But even when this outward effect is not yet pro- 
duced, the inward reality may be already there. And 
this the English novelist, Mr. A. C. Benson refers to in 
" Beside Still Waters." The speaker has discovered 
the effectiveness of a certain kind of prayer: "This 
was not a mechanical repetition of verbal forms, but a 
strong and secret uplifting of the heart to the Father of 
all. There were moments when one seemed baffled 
and powerless, when one's own strength seemed utterly 
unequal to the burden ; prayer on such occasions did 

183 



My Belief 

not necessarily bring a perfect serenity and joy, though 
there were times when it brought even that; but it 
brought sufficient strength ; it made the difficult, the 
dreaded thing possible. ... It seemed to reveal a dim 
form moving behind the veil of things, which in the 
moment of entreaty seemed to suspend its progress, to 
stop, and draw near, to smile." 

Whoever has made it a practice to spend certain 
hours or half-hours in the day alone with God, knows 
the extraordinary effect produced by the gradual accumu- 
lation of experiences, and the settled habit of the soul. 
Many of those hours seem dry and listless ; there is no 
sign or sound ; many of them are burdened and sad 
with the sense of sin and the weight of sorrow. Only 
now and then does prayer become so limpid and spon- 
taneous and vocal that one is constrained to write 
down the words of the illuminated moments. And yet 
the habit in long years secures a remarkable result. The 
assured presence of God ; the fact of redemption in the 
Cross ; the knowledge of a life hidden with Christ in God ; 
the ready recourse to God in a moment of surprise or 
danger ; the conscious connection between the soul, as 
a small fact in time and space, with the infinite and 
eternal God ; these become the very atmosphere and 
meat and drink of the inward life. 

Let anyone examine the written prayers of the 
Masters of Prayer, for example, the familiar book 
" Great Souls at Prayer," and let him push his enquiries 
into the lives and the services of those who have lived 
a life of prayer, and he will admit that this one point 
is established beyond all dispute, apart from any 

184 



How to Regard Prayer 

particular theories or dogmas of religion : prayer is, of all 
mental acts or occupations, the most wholesome, the 
most invigorating, the most powerful and power giving. 

2. He who prays much for individuals and keeps 
a record of intercession has a vast accumulation of 
evidence, that for affecting others nothing we do is so 
potent as prayer. The hidden lines of communication 
running between soul and soul, to which reference was 
made just now, are insufficiently explored. But tele- 
pathy is a convenient name for a fact which every 
intercessor has frequently experienced. It seems as if 
something of this kind happens : when you begin to 
pray, you get quickly on to a plane of being where 
distance does not count ; you are at once by the side of 
the person you pray for, in the next room or on the 
other side of the globe. But your influence on the 
person in that region of experience is much more 
powerful than it is in the more superficial intercourse 
of daily life. You reach the soul. And you bring with 
you co-operant forces. To your amazement you find 
afterwards that your prayer has brought, miraculously 
as it seems, comfort and strength ; it has stirred the 
will, at that distance, to act ; it has set in motion 
helpers or directors who come to the aid of the dis- 
tracted, or the suffering, or the sinful. 

I have myself experienced what is recorded of 
Spurgeon, though I prefer to hint at the fact as it 
is recorded by him. There came into his vestry a 
woman who had believed in Christ, but the trouble 
was the indifference or unbelief of her husband. 
Spurgeon without a moment's hesitation proposed that 

185 



My Belief 

they should pray for him. They knelt down and asked 
that he might seek Christ and be saved. As they 
prayed in the vestry, the man was reached in his home. 
When the woman returned she found her husband 
seeking salvation. 

The long delays in the answer to these prayers for 
the salvation of others make us hesitate to lay undue 
stress on this side of prayer. But, on the other hand, 
the numerous instances of conversion occurring in this 
way give us a broad basis for belief. 

I confess I am sometimes baffled by the apparent 
failure. But always the surprise of the successes takes 
hold of me afresh. You get at people through prayer ; 
you bring them all the good you can do them and all 
the truth you know in that way. Making allowance 
for all the obstacles and hindrances, which we cannot 
explain or know, you learn that to help and save 
people, there is no way like that by the Throne of 
God, in prayer and supplication. 

3. The work of the Kingdom of God shows at every 
point that it depends on prayer, and that prayer always 
produces the progress which is made. Needless to say, 
this prayer must be in the name of Jesus ; it must be 
made by those who are in Jesus, and who therefore 
derive their thought and inspiration from Him. But 
when we are brought into line with His desires, and 
pray for the things which concern His kingdom, experi- 
ence shows that the things are given, the work is done. 
Here there is no limit to the requests which must be 
made except the limit imposed by " the. name of 
Jesus." In the strong figure of Jesus Himself we 

186 



How to Regard Prayer 

may say to the mountain, Be thou removed and cast 
into the depth of the sea, and it will be done. The 
Omnipotence of God, like the constant forces of 
Nature, is steadily at work to do all that is in the 
mind of Jesus ; directly we are in harmony with 
that mind we launch out on the stream of that 
Omnipotence. 

Every student of missionary literature is familiar 
with the amazing and miraculous answers to prayer 
which mark the course of the missionary enterprise. 
And it is one of the strongest reasons for studying 
missions systematically, thatthe study brings us into con- 
tact with this miraculous element, which so far from 
being contrary to the law of Nature, is literally wrought 
into the whole development of the kingdom of God. 

A mere recital of names, or a vague general reference 
to the facts, will not perhaps carry so much conviction 
as a single incident accurately examined. For under- 
standing how prayer works, or rather how God works 
in answer to prayer, let us select a passage from the 
story of the China Inland Mission, written by Miss 
Geraldine Guinness. Here is the chapter called " The 
Coming of the Hundred." In the year 1887 the Council 
was convinced that the demands of the work in China 
required one hundred additional missionaries. That 
the Council were deliberating and acting in the name 
of Jesus is manifest, for when this great need was 
recognised, we are told, 

" Faith burned brightly in every heart. There and then the hundred 
were asked and accepted from God in fullest confidence. The Council 
set to work to arrange to receive them in 1887." 

187 



My Belief 

Here was a demand beyond the power of any man 
or council ; to induce a hundred men and women to go 
out to China, on the precarious allowance which the 
Mission offers, will be seen to be quite quixotic if we 
imagine any committee asking for people to do any 
work on similar terms. How could the right people be 
reached, or if reached, persuaded to give up home and 
prospects for this visionary enterprise ? 

But we read on, and find that the following autumn 
proved the worth and reality of this faith, and brought 
the answer to the Council's prayer. Before the year 
was ended the last detachment of the hundred sailed, 
and a further party, which included Miss Guinness, was 
arranged for, that left in January, 1888. 

Now to conclude our discussion. Prayer is an 
instinct so irrepressible that possibly no human being 
ever lived without ejaculating a prayer. When men 
give up prayer they do violence to one of the most 
sacred and persistent impulses of their nature. By a 
process of rationalising they persuade themselves that 
the instinct is a delusion, and that the practice is vain. 
Or by the deadening weight of superstition prayer may 
be reduced from a living power, to a dead form, an 
irrational magic, a numbing mechanical exercise. 

But if the instinct is allowed fair and free play ; if 
prayer is exercised in the highest form we know, that 
is, in the faith and spirit of Jesus ; certain facts esta- 
blish themselves in experience, and may be certified by 
all who will apply the necessary tests. It becomes 
plain that the habitual practice of this prayer makes 
and moulds the character to the noblest model with 



How to Regard Prayer 

which we are acquainted; that by this prayer the 
strongest and most salutary influence can be exerted 
on others ; and finally, that by the order of the Universe 
and the will of God, petitions made in this kind of 
prayer are granted, answers are given, sometimes after 
long delay and in unexpected forms, but answers which 
by their fitness and completeness and wonder can only 
be regarded as the action of the God whose most 
tender designation is, that He hears and answers 
prayer. 

Let me close with an earnest appeal. Never give up 
praying. Even if faith has faded, and you cannot 
believe that there is a God, pray that you may find 
Him. The Bible has said, " He that cometh to God 
must believe that He is, and that He is the re warder of 
them that seek Him." But the Bible comes from an 
age and a race in which the existence of God was never 
doubted. The movements of modern thought have 
unsettled the most ancient foundations. And if there 
should be a reader of these pages who has lost that 
primal faith that there is a Father of love and power, 
responsible for his life, I urge you: " Pray, pray in the 
name of Jesus, that you may find your Father." 

Book recommended : " The Open Secret," by R. F. Horton (Thomas 
Law). 



189 



X 

THE AFTER LIFE 

The confusion which prevails in our view of what 
happens to us at death is largely due to this: In a vague 
way we accept the Bible teaching on the subject ; but 
we forget that the Bible has not a clear and consistent 
doctrine of the future life. When we attempt to shape 
our thought by the Bible, as a whole, we obtain the 
blurred effect of a generalised photograph, made by 
superimposing several portraits on the top of one 
another. For, not to go into minor varieties, there 
are three very decided differences in the Bible — an 
earlier stage, a middle stage, and a final stage. Order 
can be educed out of the whole by recognising a 
development, and accepting the final as the true. But 
it is quite impossible to obtain a consistent doctrine by 
combining the several doctrines of the successive ages. 
Broadly speaking, the Law says nothing of a future 
life, the prophets teach a resurrection of the dead, 
Christ teaches the continuance of life through death. 
But the difficulty of the question is great, even when 
this progress is recognised, for vague reminiscences of 
an older view always survive in the later stage. And 
in the case of Jesus Himself, His teaching, original and 
startling, is transmitted to us through minds which 
were deeply and indelibly stained with the opinions of 

190 



The After Life 

their time. By reviewing the three stages and recognising 
the principle of progress, we may reach the ultimate 
teaching of the Bible on the subject. The question 
whether the Bible is our final authority, or whether 
some other teaching takes us further, must be left in 
abeyance. For until the Bible teaching is better under- 
stood, we can scarcely judge how it stands in relation 
to other views. Perhaps, however, the discussion will 
be clearer if I avow my own complete agnosticism on 
the subject outside the Christian revelation. Apart 
from Christ, His teaching, His own resurrection, and 
His bestowal of the Spirit, I know of no authentic 
evidence for the fact, or for the nature, of a future life. 
The prolonged investigation made by the late Mr. 
F. W. H. Myers into the phenomena of Spiritualism 
led that honest and gifted mind back to the Christian 
faith. At the conclusion of his work, he writes, 
" we can now claim to have discovered something 
within us which belongs to an environment which is 
exempt from earthly conditions, and which may antecede 
at once and interpenetrate our material scheme of 
things. Those ancient views, therefore, which repre- 
sent the soul's immortality as determined by its very 
nature and origin find themselves now as never before 
supported and reinforced." 1 But the conviction felt by 
the author is not conveyed to the reader. 

Raking among the pathological facts of double per- 
sonality, the experiments of hypnotism, the extraordinary 
experiences of dreams, visions and trances, is a sordid 

1 " Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death," by F.W. H. 
Myers, ii, 525. 

igi 



My Belief 

and unsatisfying way of establishing the soul's sur- 
vival of death. And when all is said and done, it is 
the bare survival that is established, with no light upon 
the condition of the after-life. 

Outside of this dubious psychology, science has 
nothing to say about immortality. Its final word is a 
suspense of judgment. Some minds incline to a belief 
in the future, some do not ; on the whole, the belief is 
humanising and expanding ; where nothing, therefore, 
can be known, let us incline to the hope, the unsupported 
hope ! 1 

Other religions have nothing to tell us on the subject 
which is original or credible. The dreary transmigra- 
tions of Buddhism, with the distant hope of Nirvana, 
are an unmitigated curse to the human intellect. Com- 
pared with the typically Indian conceptions, it would 
be advantageous to convince the Hindoo that at death 
he dies for ever, and must, therefore, make the most of 
life. Theosophy, which is Hinduism adapted for the 
West, has not succeeded in conveying to men a message 
of life and immortality brought to light ; it is not a 
Gospel, it is only an esoteric philosophy. 

The practical alternative is, therefore, Christ or 
nothing. In Christ we know that we shall survive 
death, and we know the manner of the survival ; apart 
from Christ, we know nothing, and speculation seems 
singularly futile. If Christ be not risen, the solid and 
valuable hope of mankind on this subject falls to the 
ground. It will be seen, therefore, that we are justified in 
confining the enquiry here to the teaching of the Bible. 

1 See Professor Osier's beautiful booklet on the Immortality of the Soul. 

192 



The After Life 

i. The Law makes no reference to a life after death 
at all. The rewards of obedience are within the terms 
of earthly blessing ; the punishment of disobedience is 
earthly disaster, and death. The school of the Sad- 
ducees, treating the Law as the authentic revelation, 
and the rest of Scripture as secondary, denied the 
resurrection, and believed in no disembodied spirits. 
When the Rabbis attempted to refute the position 
of the Sadducees on their own ground, they were 
reduced to the most pitiful expedients. Their strongest 
argument was that in the copies of the Song of Moses 
an extra letter occurred, which indicated that Moses 
not only spoke the words of the song, but will speak it 
in a future world. A mind must be very rabbinical to 
feel the force of such an argument. 

It will be remembered that Warburton, in the 
eighteenth century, wrote a famous book called " The 
Divine Legation of Moses," in which he endeavoured 
to show that Moses must have been inspired by God, 
because, coming out of Egypt, where the belief in the 
life after death was universal and fundamental, he con- 
structed a polity and a code without any reference to it. 
And one must admit how remarkable it is that a law, 
a revelation of God, which moulded a people, and con- 
tinues to hold them together after the shocks and 
dispersions of ages, should use no sanction of heaven 
or hell, hold out no rewards, and fulminate no threats, 
beyond the term of our mortal life. 

Mosaism, like Confucianism, stands in curious isola- 
tion from the universal feeling and conviction of man- 
kind, that after death comes the judgement. And 

193 N 



My Belief 

though it was impossible to keep out the germs of 
thought and aspiration which fill the atmosphere of 
human life, and the expectation of resurrection, and of 
heaven and hell, stole into Israel from the world around 
it, the negative doctrine of the Law reverberates all 
through the Old Testament. Even the poets, who are 
of all men the most convinced defenders of immortality, 
occasionally allow the sombre view of the Law to over- 
power them. A Psalmist will complain that in death 
there is no remembrance of God ; the living, only the 
living, can praise Him. Job anticipates the complete 
cessation of being (vii. 8, xx. 9). " Man dieth and 
wasteth away ; yea, man giveth up the ghost and where 
is he ? As the waters fail from the sea, and the river 
decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth 
not ; t.ll the heavens be no more they shall not awake, 
nor be roused out of their sleep" (xiv. 10-12). 

The philosophy of Israel, if the Wisdom Literature 
may be so described, differs from the philosophy of the 
Greeks in nothing more than in this : While Plato has 
an elaborate and richly-coloured eschatology, and leads 
the soul of the dead into a world of spirit, where the 
judge pronounces on each life, and the wicked go into 
eternal torment, while the righteous go into Elysium, 
Ecclesiastes sighs over the finality of death, the long 
home to which man goes, when the cord of life is 
broken, nor is his pensive and world-weary pessimism 
relieved by a gleam of hope for the future. 

It is easy, then, from the Law, and from the echoes of 
its teaching in the rest of the Old Testament, to con- 
struct a doctrine of annihilation out of the Bible. If 

194 



The After Life 

the Bible is verbally inspired, texts will show that when 
a man dies he does not live again. 

This plain and unmistakable stratum of Bible teach- 
ing we habitually disregard. The commonsense of man- 
kind is too strong for it. An instinct of immortality is 
in the human race. Though science opposes it, and 
philosophy is seldom convincing on the subject, an 
irrepressible conviction breaks up through all human 
life, that though worms devour the body we shall 
stand on the earth again, and with our eyes see God. 
If Moses had the design, which is attributed to him, of 
turning the attention of his people entirely away from 
the hope of immortality, he signally failed. Before the 
exile prophets and psalmists began to breathe the 
doctrine of the future life, and when the exiles returned 
from Babylon, they brought with them a belief in the 
resurrection which Judaism retains to this day. 

2. The second view which runs through the whole 
Bible is that of the prophets — a view shared with 
the Egyptians and the Greeks, and other races of 
mankind. It seems to have entered Israel through 
the prophets ; it echoes through the Psalms ; it 
gathered force in the Maccabean age, and in New 
Testament times it was the orthodox doctrine of 
Judaism, only denied by the Sadducees, who, for that 
reason, were regarded with dislike by the whole 
community. This view was, that the body is placed 
in the grave, and the soul sleeps until the day of 
resurrection, when the body re-animated by the soul 
will rise and be judged. Some will rise to contempt and 
shame, others to blessing and reward. 

195 N 2 



My Belief 

The earliest of the written prophets, Hosea, contains 
the words, which, ambiguous as they are in their 
application, are in themselves a striking manifesto 
of a creed widely differing from the Law : " I will 
ransom them from the power of the grave ; I will 
redeem them from death. O death, where are thy 
plagues ? O grave, where is thy destruction?" (xiii. 14). 
And so the great prophet of the eighth century : " Thy 
dead shall live ; My dead bodies shall arise. Awake 
and sing ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as 
the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the 
dead." 1 In the exile the promise of restoration is 
couched in terms of resurrection. The dry bones will 
live again : " Thus saith the Lord God, Behold I will 
open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your 
graves, O My people " (xxxvii. 12). In the Maccabean 
age the doctrine of resurrection and judgement assumed 
the form, which, in the popular mind it has retained 
ever since. 2 " And the earth shall restore those that 
are asleep in her, and so shall the dust those that dwell 
therein in silence, and the secret places shall deliver 
those souls that were committed unto them." 

This was the view which prevailed in the Christian 
Church, and determined the reverent mode of Christian 
burial. The body of the dead was no longer burnt, 
according to the practice of the Romans, but was laid 
asleep in a bed ; the Catacombs were filled with the 
sleeping saints. The burial ground was called in 
Greek a dormitory (cemetery). The day of resurrec- 
tion was expected, when those who are asleep would 

1 isa. xx;vi. 19. 2 dan. xii. 2, 3, cf. 2 esd. vii. 32. 

196 



The After Life 

issue out of the tombs as Lazarus did at the command 
of Christ, as Christ did by the power of God. Islam 
accepted the same view ; the dead are buried, not 
in burying grounds, but along the roads, so that they 
may easily awake as the angel of the resurrection 
passes along; or they are kept in comfortable and 
carpeted rooms, the tarbush hanging at the head 
ready for use again. In this respect Christendom 
has relapsed from the early practice and even from 
Moslem example. We make hideous and depressing 
cemeteries ; and we exasperate our sorrow in bereave- 
ment by the fiction that our beloved lie in vaults 
and graves, churchyards, and thronged cities of the 
dead. 

3. But there is a third view in the Bible. We may 
without hesitation ascribe it to Jesus. And though 
it has never been frankly accepted by Christendom, 
it creeps into our thoughts and gilds the tomb with 
a faint light. If we can succeed in connecting this 
view with our Lord, and can venture to hold and 
defend it consistently, acknowledging that the other 
views were transitional, representing only the growth 
of belief, until Christ brought life and immortality 
to light in His Gospel, we shall be able to comfort 
each other more effectually beside the grave : " He 
is not there, we know he is not there." We may even 
in time sweep away the hateful paraphernalia of burials, 
which are wholly pagan. The less Christian the 
Church is, the more appalling and depressing it makes 
the grave. But when it becomes approximately 
Christian, it uses the old words of Hosea, with the 

197 



My Belief 

ring of Paul's faith in them : " Death, where is thy 
sting? O grave, where is thy victory ? " 

The third view in the Bible is, that while death is 
only the dissolution of the material body, the informing 
personality continues to live. There is no thought 
of sleeping or of suspended animation. Active, con- 
scious, progressive, the spirits who fall asJeep in Jesus 
wake at once and fare on there as here. This view 
prevails very widely in Protestant Christianity, that 
is wherever men are allowed to form their beliefs by 
the unfettered study of Scripture. The after-world 
of the Catholic Church, with its Hell, Purgatory and 
Heaven, is a very different conception from what we 
may call the resultant view of the Bible. 

Now, are we justified in speaking of Christ's view and 
identifying it with the one before us ? There is language 
put into His mouth which implies view number two, e.g. 
"The hour cometh in which all that are in the tombs 
shall hear His voice and shall come forth ; they that have 
done good unto the resurrection of life ; and they that 
have done ill unto the resurrection of judgement." 1 
But it may be argued that the form of this language was 
determined by the mind and opinion of the reporter. 
For if we go on a little farther in the same Gospel, we 
find Martha repeating the current belief: "He shall rise 
again in the resurrection of the last day," and Jesus cor- 
rects her by saying : " I am the resurrection and the life." 2 
A saying like this opens our eyes to the fact that Jesus 
took a new and original view of the question, a view 
determined by His own person, and His own approaching 

1 JOHN V. 28, 29. 2 JOHN Xi. 25. 

198 



The After Life 

experience. What that view was, might hardly be 
gathered from the story of Dives and Lazarus, in which 
the two do not lie in the grave, but pass at once to their 
respective places ; because the whole setting is pictorial, 
and we are not at liberty to press figurative language 
to establish doctrine. But in the words to the thief on 
the Cross the view of Jesus is made clear : " To-day 
thou shalt be with me in Paradise." He certainly did 
not think of a long sleep in the tomb, and a final 
waking to life. As death occurred, Paradise was 
entered. What he taught in the word from the Cross, 
He had held throughout His teaching. This may be 
shown from the surprising and original argument by 
which He proved the life after death even from the 
Law of Moses. No Rabbi ever advanced such an 
argument ; but with Jesus it was decisive. If God is 
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that shows the 
patriarchs to be living, because God is not the God of 
the dead but of the living. The argument is of course 
not logical but theological. Because God is what He 
is, what Jesus knows Him to be, the souls that have been 
in relation with Him, have been His friends, and the 
objects of His grace, do not die. The doctrine of Jesus 
offered an ocular demonstration in the Transfiguration, 
when Moses and Elijah, living indeed, were seen 
conversing with Him. 

The doctrine He held and taught was confirmed by 
what happened after His own death. Those mani- 
festations, imperfectly recorded as they were, yet prove 
to be a veritable Gospel of the Resurrection. The 
resurrection of Jesus is the one clear and verified 

199 



My Belief 

evidence we have of the mode and condition of the 
after life. The lesson could only be impressed on 
mankind by the tour deforce of a physical resurrection. 
The body left the tomb. But the truth which is con- 
veyed by that extreme measure was not, and is not, 
that the soul of the believer will lie in the tomb until 
the resurrection at the last day. It was precisely the 
same assurance as that which was given to»the thief on 
the Cross. The body of the resurrection was a spiritual 
body, which passed through closed doors, and ascended 
up to heaven. The practical inference, therefore, from 
the resurrection of Jesus was from the first, that at 
death we put off our mortal body to be clothed at once 
in a body suitable to the new condition of existence. 
And this is the doctrine of Christianity which super- 
sedes, and ought to abolish, the crude and tentative 
notions through which it was reached. 

On the authority, and from the example of Jesus, we 
who believe in Jesus know that when we die, we live, 
Mors janua vita. The dissolution of the body does not 
affect me. I live, I continue, I fare on, carrying with 
me the results of my probation ; alive unto God, with 
Christ, I really begin the career for which life on earth 
was a preparation. Strong in this faith of Jesus, I 
revise not only the Law of Moses and the Resurrection 
doctrine of the Old Testament, but those passages of 
the New Testament which are still coloured with the 
worn-out doctrines. 

In this practical conclusion we have the example, if 
not the authority, of Paul. He betrays in his language 
the confusion between view two and view three, which 

200 



The After Life 

exists in Christendom to-day. Accepting current ideas, 
the inherited dogma of Judaism, he spoke as if the 
body would rise from the ground ; he used the analogy 
of the seed, and suggested that the resurrection of this 
new body out of the old would occur at a remote future 
date, when the trumpet should sound. This was all 
Jewish or Greek. But in his own religious experience 
he follows closely the ideas of Jesus. He felt that 
while the outward man was daily decaying, the inward 
was renewed. He believed that when the tabernacle 
of the flesh was dissolved in death, he would be 
clothed upon with a spiritual body and mortality 
would be swallowed up of life. 1 At the end of his 
life he had no doubt at all that to be absent from 
the body would be to be present with the Lord. 
When his warfare was over he anticipated an imme- 
diate crown. 

We may therefore distinguish between the Bible view 
and the Christian view. And even in the Christian 
view we may distinguish between the view of Christ 
himself, and the view of those followers whose thought 
was indelibly tinged with prevailing opinions upon 
the subject. And we propose to bring order and 
consistency into our thoughts by accepting Christ's 
view as the final one, which is entitled to correct all 
that went before. Nowhere does the truth of the 
progressive character of revelation bring a more 
welcome relief, or a clearer light. In no case have we 
more reason to be thankful for the Protestant right of 
going to Scripture for ourselves, and for the Protestant 

1 2 cor. iv. 16, v. 4. 
201 



My Belief 



method of criticism which enables us to arrive at the 
final and absolute truths of Christianity. 

Let us endeavour to state clearly the belief of the 
after life, as it results from accepting the revelations of 
Christ as decisive. Directly the physical change which 
we call death takes place, the personality which has 
used and inhabited the body is clothed upon with 
another body, a spiritual one ; a body like the Lord's 
body after the resurrection, suitable for that new order 
in which we are to live. This clothing upon with the 
new body is what is sometimes called — from the earthly 
standpoint — the resurrection of the body. " He giveth 
us a body," that is, the creative power of God makes 
an organism in the world beyond death, just as He 
made an organism for this present world. The decay- 
ing particles of the body of our humiliation are not 
needed for the purpose ; they would be useless in the 
world of spirit. The idea that the skull and bones, and 
even the skin and flesh, with which we died, will be 
summoned out of the fire of cremation or out of the 
dust of the grave, was only an accommodation, to 
enable men in earlier times to realise the fact of a 
resurrection. That accommodation may still be neces- 
sary for simple and unimaginative people. But we 
should greatly help the world at large if we could make 
clear the Christian truth, that the resurrection is always 
taking place. As Christ says, I am the resurrection 
and the life, so in Him all are made alive. The resur- 
rection accompanies death — there is no interval. In 
the same way, the judgement is immediate. The last 
judgement is for every soul the practical verdict passed 

202 



The After Life 

upon life at its close. The soul emerging into the 
resurrection-world is flashed into the presence of Christ, 
and judged. No lengthy investigation is needed, for 
everything is known, and the verdict is ready. We 
appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, and our 
destiny in the world after death is determined. The 
judgement is not arbitrary, but results from the intrinsic 
facts. What we are as the sum and result of our 
earthly life, we proceed to be in the progressive life of 
the new order. Just as here there is a good and holy 
and unselfish and godly life, which may be called 
heaven, and a base, egoistic, sensual, godless life, 
which may be called hell, so will it be in the after 
life. At the judgement we pass into the heaven or hell 
of the seonian world. There knowledge fails and 
speculation is vain. Is the decision of this earthly life 
final, or can it be corrected ? Must we remain for ever 
in the state which is determined for us at death ? Can 
consciousness die out, and the soul cease to be ? Is 
there a second death which means extinction ? Does 
the redemptive process continue in the world beyond, 
and will Christ, who descended into Hades, labour to 
redeem those who were lost here ? These and similar 
questions are constantly raised ; but no decisive answer 
can be given to them. Dogma crystallises answers, 
which hold their ground for a time ; but the answers, 
being without genuine evidence, eventually lose their 
power and are disregarded. The Christian doctrine 
only takes us to the Resurrection and the Judgement, 
the Heaven and the Hell, which follow immediately 
after death ; the rest remains unrevealed. 

203 



My Belief 

So far as the veil is lifted by the striking pictures 
which our Lord drew of the future, the whole stress is 
laid on the decisive separation, and on the irrevocable 
punishment of the bad. But we shall be very chary 
of pressing these indications, for He, like smaller 
teachers, necessarily used the language and ideas of 
the time, in order to convey His meaning to His con- 
temporaries. And it is quite possible that the gulf fixed 
between Dives and Lazarus represents only the imme- 
diate effect of the two earthly lives just concluded; 
and even the radical distinction between the sheep and 
the goats can only be used to bring out the immediate 
verdict or award on life as it has just been lived. 
Ionian life and aeonian punishment may refer only to 
a quality, and not to duration. But we cannot tell. 
Indeed our knowledge of that after life is very small. 
But the faith which we have just been examining 
assures us that our dead live unto God ; they are 
not in the cold ground. Their presence with us and 
influence over us can be felt ; they are often far nearer 
to us by the transition and better able to help us. We 
do not sorrow as those who are without hope. We 
rejoice, because we now know them as we know Christ, 
and in Him. Thus Mr. W. L. Walker adds a very 
touching note to his work on Christian Theism, which 
I take the liberty of quoting : 

" It is hoped that it is not out of place to state here that, shortly after 
the MS. of this book was sent to the publishers, the writer had the 
misfortune to lose a devoted wife. She was deeply interested in this 
subject, and before she passed away the writer promised to cherish her 
spiritual presence, and asked her (if it was right and not hurtful) to 

204 



The After Life 

try and manifest her presence to him. He feels bound to say that he 
believes she has done so." J 

The vulgarities and chicaneries which have attached 
themselves to Spiritualism must not blind our eyes to 
the evidence, of another kind, which produces an over- 
whelming conviction in the minds of innumerable 
Christians, that their beloved ones who have passed 
behind the veil are at no distance from them, and even 
hold silent intercourse with them. 

1 "Christian Theism and a Spiritual Monism," by W. L. Walker. 
P- 443- 

Book recommended : "The Christian Doctrine of Immortality," by 
Professor Salmond (T. & T. Clark). 



205 



XI 



THE DIFFICULTY ARISING FROM THE 
VARIETY OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS 

There is a singularly illuminating remark in one of 
the letters of Paul, that there must be heresies in order 
that they who are approved may be made manifest. 1 The 
heresies are not in themselves admirable ; they are 
elsewhere ranked among the works of the flesh. 2 But 
they are inevitable, and they serve a useful purpose. 
If we could imagine religious truth delivered to man- 
kind in clear and unmistakable formulae, about the 
meaning of which there could be no dispute, we 
should be bound immediately to picture to ourselves a 
stagnant spiritual state. The certainty and rigidity 
of the truth would be a coercion as strong as that of 
the Mediaeval Church. Indeed that Mediaeval Church 
gives us an instructive illustration of what results from 
expunging the thought of Paul, that " there must be 
heresies." The Roman Church in its plenitude of 
power decided that " there must not be heresies." 
The organised campaign for the extermination of 
the Albigenses, or Alva's commission to execute the 
whole population of the Netherlands, was the result. 
The conscientious vigour of the Inquisition produced 

1 I COR. Xi. 19. 2 GAL. V. 20. 

206 



The Variety of Religious Opinions 

uniformity of practice, if not of belief — by the simple 
method of burning those who did not conform. 

But if religious truth were certain, if its propositions 
were clear and indisputable, nothing could prevent it 
from tyrannising over the human will in the same way. 
Terrible as the mischief is which the Roman Church 
produces, it would be still more terrible if its doctrines 
were true, and if its infallibility were assured. No 
careful student of the Papacy in the century before 
the Reformation, reading for example the history of 
the Popes as written by the Roman Catholic professor 
at Vienna, Pastor, can help seeing that Protestantism 
was necessary for the survival of Roman Catholicism. 
Unless that "heresy" had blazed into being, and 
elicited Ignatius Loyola and the counter-Reforma- 
tion, it seems certain that Catholic Christianity would 
have perished of its own corruptions. One uniform 
and certain rule of truth would not be for the advan- 
tage of truth or of men in the present conditions of 
human life. " There must be heresies, that they who 
are approved may be made manifest." 

At the same time everyone must feel the difficulty 
and bewilderment which ensue where perfect freedom 
of thought is allowed. Never did men live in such 
unshackled liberty as we do in England, 

" The land where, girt by friend or foe, 
A man may speak the thing he wills." 

Every one may have any religion he likes, or none. 
Every form of Christianity is tolerated and protected. 
And through the constant intercourse with other 

207 



My Belief 



countries and the activity of the Press, every one 
sees spread before him the infinite variety of religious 
opinion which prevails in the world. There are the 
three universal religions, Christianity, Islam, 
Buddhism. There are the racial or national reli- 
gions, Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Shintoism. 
There are the myriad cults and superstitions of the 
uncivilised peoples. 

Or if the modern man in the West is irrevocably 
committed to Christianity, or on sufficient grounds 
rules the other religions out of court as belonging to 
lower stages of progress, yet Christianity itself presents 
the broad divisions, Greek, Catholic, and Protestant, 
besides numerous Eastern Churches, Syrian, Nestorian, 
Armenian, Coptic, Abyssinian. If the Englishman is 
sufficiently grounded in Protestantism to confine his 
thought to that one branch of Christianity, still he is 
confronted with Anglicanism, claiming to be Catholic, 
Presbyterianism claiming to be Scriptural, Methodism 
claiming to be Evangelical, besides the innumerable 
Independent Churches, which base themselves solely on 
New Testament usage. But in a free atmosphere like 
ours new movements shoot out continually with meteoric 
suddenness ; a Salvation Army, or a Church of Mrs. 
Eddy, shoots across the sky and covers a hemisphere 
within a few years. And then, within Christendom, 
yet in protest against all its dogmas and practices, 
arise movements like the Theosophical or the Ethical 
societies, Socialist brotherhoods, and Labour churches, 
all recommending their shibboleths and demanding 
adhesion. 

208 



The Variety of Religious Opinions 

In this complexity and collision of beliefs, and in the 
apparent want of any sufficient authority which can 
decide between them, it can occasion little wonder that 
many disavow all religious beliefs and find refuge in 
agnosticism. 

It must be admitted that they who desire an excuse 
for being rid of religion have it ready at hand, just as 
they who want a pretext for giving up food or medicine 
can find it in the diversities of dietetic or medical 
theories. 

But we cannot give up food, and therefore we take 
what is good for us, in spite of conflicting authorities. 
In sickness we must seek medical help however much 
doctors may disagree. And man, speaking broadly, 
must have religion. He cannot let it alone. The 
variety of beliefs, therefore, does not absolve us from 
the duty, nor destroy the possibility, of our finding 
truth. 

Let me address to the reader a personal question. 
Truth being the one prize worth gaining in life, will 
you be baulked of your prize, and miss the object for 
which you came into being, because, when all coercion 
is withdrawn, and men have perfect freedom to enquire, 
and liberty to act on what they believe, the variety of 
opinions is great, and the conflict of dogmas is loud ? 

Is there not another conclusion to be drawn with far 
greater reason ? The variety of opinions rather shows 
the necessity of religion. The search which issues in 
many conflicting beliefs at least shows how instinctive 
and irrepressible the search is. We cannot resist the 
conviction that there is some reality behind the veil, 

209 o 



My Belief 

when so many men, in so many ways, are endeavouring 
to lift a corner of it and to see. 

Let us for a moment take a broad and inclusive 
survey of the human race. You see men in every age 
and every country feeling after God, seeking the spiritual 
world, if haply they may find. From the pathetic 
records of man in the Neolithic Age, and the offerings 
presented to the unseen at the grave of the dead, through 
the vast systems of Babylonian or Egyptian religion, in 
the testimonies of Peruvian and Mexican religious rites, 
no less than in the great systems which survive and 
cover the earth to-day, under countless forms, the 
heart of man is essentially engaged in one quest : it is 
seeking its God. It knows it will find no rest until it 
finds rest in Him. 

You cannot therefore separate yourself from your 
kind in the search, however you may differ from this 
view or that in the discovery. If you renounce the 
search, if you proclaim your indifference to the great 
questions, What is God ? What is His truth ? What 
is His will ? you only fall out of the ranks of humanity, 
relapsing into the herd of lower creatures which 
nourish a dim life within the brain, regardless of the 
aspirations and longings which are the noblest charac- 
teristics of man. 

But unhappy is the man who cuts himself off from 
the body of humanity, the man who would cease to be 
human because humanity is divided into many races 
and languages, and presents an infinite variety of 
customs and ideas. And, as religion is of all human 
characteristics the most constant and universal, woe to 

210 



The Variety of Religious Opinions 

the man who cuts himself off from all religion because 
there are diversities in it. No doubt the search is more 
difficult, because the varieties are so numerous, but for 
the same reason the search is more necessary. It is all 
men's quest, all men's desire, to know the truth of 
religion. The heresies must appear, that the approved 
may be manifest, but the discovery of the truth is the 
goal, the attainable goal. 

Let us assume, then, that we are not seeking an 
excuse to escape religion, but are honestly seeking the 
truth of religion, under a conviction that what humanity 
seeks we must seek, and that what is sought by the 
whole must be within the range of discovery. 

Now surely in Christendom, at least, there are at 
least two truths in which all agree. Granted that 
there are many and exasperated divisions, you may 
enquire of a Christian, East or West, Catholic or Pro- 
testant, Anglican or Dissenter, and on these two points 
you will find that there is a common conviction, here 
is a platform which all Christians occupy together. 
And the more stress you lay on the diversities of 
churches and sects, the more striking, it must be 
admitted, will be this agreement on the truth which 
is common to all. All Christendom holds (i) that 
God is, and (2) that Christ is the way to Him. 

But these two beliefs are so important and so inclu- 
sive that, if they are held, the varieties of opinion must 
in reality be secondary, if not unimportant. And if 
the contact of races and religions, which is the most 
wonderful feature of our day, points to a possible agree- 
ment on these two beliefs, if India and China begin to 

211 o 2 



My Belief 

accept Christian Theism, and to see that God is, 
because Christ is, and by Christ men come to God, 
a wide view of the thought of our time may lead us to 
the surprising conclusion that all mankind is graded 
according to a recognisable principle, and the van is 
occupied by those who believe in Christ as the way to 
God. Such a view of a unity towards which the race 
is tending may do more than counterbalance the be- 
wildering diversity of beliefs in detail within the bounds 
of Christendom. 

But let us examine the two beliefs which unite 
Christendom and make it a light and guide to the 
world. God is. In a sense, as we saw in a previous 
chapter, this is a belief which unites mankind. That 
prayer of Pope's, which anticipated the study of Com- 
parative Religion by nearly two centuries, is really an 
echo of thoughts as old as the records of man; it is 
the essence of religion, at all times and everywhere : 

Father of all, in every age, 

In every clime adored 
By saint, by savage, or by sage, 

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, 

Thou great first Cause, least understood, 

Who all my sense confined 
To know but this, that Thou art good, 

And that myself am blind, 

Yet gave me in this dark estate 

To see the good from ill, 
And binding nature fast in fate, 

Left free the human will, 

To Thee whose temple is all space 

Whose altar earth, sea, skies. 
One chorus let all being raise, 

All nature's incense rise. 

212 



The Variety of Religious Opinions 

That is a prayer in which the Vedantist could join 
with the Christian, the Buddhist with the Moslem. 
But Christendom interprets the Father of all, the great 
First Cause, through Christ. And it is the God 
revealed in Christ whom all churches, however other- 
wise divided, adore. All are agreed that God, as 
revealed in Christ, is love, holy love, the author of all 
being, the maker and upholder of the universe, who 
stands to man in the relation which is best expressed 
by that of a father to his children. 

It is its conception of God which makes each religion. 
And this conception of God makes Christianity. What 
are the divergencies of religious opinion in comparison 
with this agreement in the idea of the infinite and 
eternal Being, who is the author of all ? Let us agree 
on this, we may well say, and sink all other differences. 
This creed is sufficient ; let us expand in different ways 
according to the conditions, racial or personal, of 
individuals. 

The second belief is already involved in the first : 
Christ is the way to God. "This is life eternal, to 
know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
Thou hast sent." The God of Christianity is revealed 
and known through Christ. It is God in Christ that 
Christians worship. There have been many schools of 
thought — as Paul says, there must be such — interpret- 
ing Christ in various ways. But in Christianity there 
is no difference of opinion on this point, that in some 
way or other to interpret Christ is to know God. 
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" is a 
clue on the lips of Jesus in the fourth Gospel to all 

213 



My Belief 

theology. Some may lay stress on the teaching of 
Jesus, and show how pure and lofty His conception of 
God was. Some may rather insist on the Person of 
Jesus, the consciousness which reflects God as in a 
mirror. Some may dwell on the life of beneficence 
and social betterment, and infer the purpose of God 
from the conduct of Jesus. But the prevalent inter- 
pretation of Christ in Christendom has always been, 
that the voluntary and deliberate self-oifering of Christ 
on the Cross for the sins of this world, an offering 
with which God was well pleased, is the clearest and 
fullest exhibition of God's character. In that offering 
God is seen accepting the death of Jesus as the con- 
demnation of sin, so that He is able to forgive sinners, 
without any derogation from His supreme holiness. It 
is in the Cross that God appears as One who is just 
and yet forgiving and saving the unjust. 

It is not a little remarkable to note how this supreme 
revelation of the being and character of God is fore- 
shadowed in the ethnic religions. That one must die 
for all to bring men to God, seems to be a latent instinct 
of the human race. 

Professor Frazer, in "The Golden Bough," collects 
numerous instances from all religions, and from all 
countries. One will suffice, with the understanding 
that it stands for many. The Khonds of Orissa used 
to offer to Tari a human sacrifice. The devoted person 
was set apart, bathed and anointed. Then, bound and 
drugged, the body was torn to pieces and scattered 
over the fields. The victim was regarded as divine. 
In the more civilised stages of natural religion, an 

214 



The Variety of Religious Opinions 

animal was substituted for a man ; for example, in the 
Dionysus worship at Athens, an ox was slain instead of 
a boy, and the slayers were indicted for murder. The 
animal was eaten as a delegate for the divinity. 

With the advance of x thought and sensibility, the 
animal sacrifice seems unsatisfactory. How can the 
blood of bulls and goats take away sin ? The sacrifice, 
to avail, must be voluntary, and must have in it an 
ethical quality. In Java the men would readily 
commit suicide for their sultan. In modern Japan, 
Lafcadio Hearn tells of a wife whose husband in an 
official position had lied. She arrayed herself in white 
and committed suicide, leaving a message behind that 
she wished she had more lives to sacrifice, to atone for 
her husband's sin. 

We may trace the idea through all religions, from the 
most primitive to the most advanced ; we may discover 
it underlying all our moral convictions. The unknown 
God, whom man desires to know, is a Being who 
cannot away with iniquity, whose holiness is absolute 
and unyielding, and yet who is bent on forgiving and 
saving men. Men try to reconcile the apparent contra- 
diction, and the vast systems of sacrifice, ablution, 
purification, initiation, grow up in every country and 
in every race. For an instinct tells men what they 
want, though not the way of realising it. That all 
these methods of propitiation leave an aching void, 
is well known. The conscience does not attain to 
peace, nor the life to purity. 

In Christ comes a revelation which justifies the 
instinct of mankind and yet shows the way by which 

215 



My Belief 

the instinct is satisfied. The sigh, dumb and inarticulate, 
for reconciliation with God, which humanity is always 
heaving, wins this simple answer. Nowhere is it given 
more clearly than in the Epistle to the Hebrews; for 
though the writer only has in view the sacrificial system 
of Judaism, which left the heart of man unsatisfied, the 
argument applies to all the efforts which men have 
made to obtain reconciliation with God. From the 
standpoint of Comparative Religion Judaism is not so 
much unique as typical. It expresses in a consummate 
way, and with a kind of spiritual genius, the effort of 
man to go about to establish his own righteousness, 
and so to attain peace with God. 

But the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews is, 
that the revelation of God in His Son Christ Jesus 
actually accomplishes what man has ever striven in 
vain to do. The holiness of God remains inviolable, 
and yet He can freely forgive sin, because in the death 
of Jesus sin was condemned. He who, through the 
eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God 
(ix. 14) took the condemnation of sin upon Himself, 
that men might be forgiven. It was the free act of 
Jesus. There was no constraint. The moral value lay 
in the voluntariness of it. " By which will we have 
been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus 
Christ once for all " (x. 10). 

It is, therefore, by the Cross that God in Christ 
becomes so subduing and heart-melting a reality. The 
thought of Christendom about God is penetrated through 
and through with the idea of the sacrifice of Christ. 

A perverted and ignorant theology may sometimes 

216 



The Variety of Religious Opinions 

have used the Cross to libel God, representing Him as 
punishing the innocent for the guilty, and correcting 
the iniquity of man by an injustice of His own. But 
the words and blundering interpretations have not 
hindered men from discovering the truth. As Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so was the Son 
of Man lifted up And whosoever believes in Him has 
eternal life. 

But these two beliefs which unite Christendom, 
or let us rather call them a dual belief, for they are 
essentially related, the belief that God is the Being 
revealed by Christ, or that Christ was sent by God in 
order to reveal Him, will make the union of Christendom 
a reality, if we are only willing to concentrate our thought 
on the great point of agreement. 

The diversity of religious opinions is the soundest 
reason for taking refuge in religious agreements. What 
all Christians believe everywhere and always, that is 
what we ought to believe. What Christians are divided 
upon, that we should hold with modesty and deference, 
considering that no truth of God is of private interpre- 
tation; and no private view is the foundation of a 
world-religion. 

If the reader will be advised, and will retreat into 
these truths which are by all Christians accepted and 
avowed, he will find there a foothold from which he 
can examine with composure the differences, he will 
find the manna sent down from heaven, and the living 
water, on which the soul can feed. The diversities which 
were once a difficulty will have done him the invalu- 
able service of driving him to the central and the real. 

217 



XII 

THE ABSENCE OF A CERTAIN RELIGIOUS 
EXPERIENCE 

" If I had that sense of God's presence which you 
have, if I had that personal communion with the living 
Christ, if I knew that my sins were forgiven, and that I 
am a child of God, if I had the witness of the Spirit, 
which you speak of, I would be a Christian. But I 
have not, and I suppose I must take it as I find it." 
That is a common attitude of mind, which hinders 
many from a religious life, and keeps them in a vain 
expectation of something which after all can only come 
by an act of their own. Perhaps it has not always been 
made sufficiently clear how we make our own religious 
experience. Faith, in the Scriptural sense, is an act of 
the Will. It is possible that by dwelling on this very 
simple truth some, who are standing all the day idle, 
may be induced to work to-day in the vineyard. 

Before pressing the point home, however, it may be 
well to show the fallacy which lies in the kind of objec- 
tion just mentioned. In the first place, men differ from 
each other so completely that no one ought to 
expect the spiritual experience of another; what is to 
be looked for is your own, which will probably be quite 
unlike any other's. And in the second place, the 
experience of others can never really be known ; we 

218 



Absence of a Religious Experience 

misread the signs and the expressions. While I 
imagine your experience to be assurance and joy and 
victory, and wish that I had it, your experience may 
seem to yourself nothing but failure and doubt. These 
points deserve a little expansion. 

i. The varieties of religious experience are not only 
numerous, they are equal to the number of the human 
race. There are, we suppose, 1,500,000,000 human 
beings on the earth. There are just so many varieties 
of religious experience. It is not possible for any one 
of these living souls to have precisely what comes to 
any other, because each one is distinct and individual, 
and cannot be confused with another. No two blades 
of grass in the miles of rolling prairie are alike. 
No two thrushes in Spring sing exactly the same ; a 
trained naturalist distinguishes the individual song. In 
the vast flocks of sheep, those gregarious creatures 
which are the by-word of dependence and defective 
initiative, a careful shepherd knows each one as per- 
fectly distinct from the rest. 

Human beings, as more highly developed, are more 
decisively individual. It is said that the impress of the 
thumb-mark will identify any one out of the fifteen 
hundred millions. So essentially original is each person 
that the differences are carried down into details so 
apparently unimportant as this. 

The old psychologists attempted a rough generalisa- 
tion, and declared that there are four temperaments — 
the sanguine, the nervous, the melancholic, and the 
phlegmatic. But that is a very loose division. No 
person exactly represents any one of the temperaments. 

219 



My Belief 

Strictly speaking there are as many temperaments as 
there are people. 

To expect, therefore, a religious experience like 
Paul's or John's, like Augustine's, or Thomas a 
Kempis', or Bunyan's, or Wesley's, would be un- 
reasonable. One has only to reflect that the experience 
of each of these eminent saints is totally different from 
that of the others. Paul's experience of Christ and 
of salvation, his perspective of truth, his order of 
spiritual development, hardly touches John's at any 
point. The common element is the relation to Christ 
as the object of faith, the cause of the experience, 
and the undisputed Master. But John knows nothing 
of that dialectic by which Paul states and defends 
the Gospel, a dialectic which puts iron into the blood 
of his faith. And Paul is a stranger to that quietism 
which in John seems to mark off men and things in 
fixed and unchangeable spheres. To John the dark- 
ness and the light are distinct; some are in darkness 
and some are in light, and Christ gathers together 
in one the children of light. To Paul all are in dark- 
ness, but all are to be brought into the light. The 
inner life of Paul is a strenuous conflict, aiming at 
victory and the crown ; the inner life of John is a 
serene attainment with eternity in present possession. 
Augustine is, in a remarkable degree, moulded on 
Paul, but there is not the least danger of confusing 
the two. No one would mistake a passage of the 
Confessions for a chapter of a Pauline epistle. For 
Paul the past is dead, and he presses buoyantly for- 
ward. For Augustine it lives and tinges his religion 

220 



Absence of a Religious Experience 

with regret and self-humiliation. Paulinism is trans- 
muted in the mind of Augustine. Presently from 
words of Paul is derived a doctrine which Paul would 
repudiate. The hints of the Fall, or of Predestination 
in Paul become in Augustine iron-bound theories which 
gripped and cramped the mind of Christians for more 
than a thousand years. How absolutely different is 
the " Imitatio Christi" from "Grace Abounding," or 
both from Wesley's Journal. There is the same 
Christ, the same salvation, the same destiny, but the 
experience is in each case perfectly distinct. But 
if in these eminent saints, all brought very near to 
Christ, the differences are maintained and even 
emphasised, we must frankly admit that our own 
experience of spiritual things is likely, nay, certain, 
to differ from that of anyone else. Nay, the careful 
study of the memorials of saintly lives shows that 
the experience of each person will change and vary 
at different periods almost as much as the experiences 
of different people diverge from one another. Look 
into the Epistles to the Thessalonians — how different 
is that Paul from the writer of Philippians ! The 
phase of spiritual life in Ephesians and Colossians 
is so different from that of the four undisputed epistles 
that an ingenious critic, totally ignorant of the changes 
in spiritual experience, may easily argue that the two 
groups come from different minds. They may be 
different minds and yet both may be the mind of 
Paul. 

When I look at my own work and compare it with 
work I did twenty years ago, the difference of the two 

221 



My Belief 

mental and spiritual attitudes is quite as great as that 
between the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel. 
There is no intrinsic or psychological reason for 
doubting that one man might have written those two 
books. The argument which would assign them to 
different authors must turn upon external evidence, and 
such evidence is wanting. 

You may therefore settle it, even without pushing 
the illustrations any further, that your spiritual expe- 
rience must be entirely your own ; you must not 
expect it to resemble that of any one else, you must 
not be surprised if it shows the most marked divergence 
from that which it most nearly resembles. 

But the second point will disincline you even more 
to judge yourself by others, or even to compare yourself 
with them. 

2. The spiritual experience of another person cannot 
be known to you from the inside. The expressions 
which men use to describe the secret passages of the 
soul are not constant ; they have no fixed meanings. 
One man uses strong and highly-coloured language, 
but he means no more than another does who uses 
only the lowest and most halting terms. It requires 
an effort of thought which few people attempt to make, 
if one is to realise what another's religious experience 
would be, interpreted in one's own language. 

Perhaps I may be excused if I offer a personal 
illustration of this fact. Again and again I have had 
the opportunity of learning the impression which my 
religious experience makes on other people. They 
credit me with a degree of faith, with a personal 

222 



Absence of a Religious Experience 

knowledge of Christ, with living in nearness to God; 
they imagine that I have a certitude, an inward victory, 
a joy and efficiency of service ; it is shown with perfect 
naivete and sincerity, and I have no reason to question 
the impression which is actually made on their minds. 

But when I see myself thus as others see me, I find 
hardly any connection between that and the person 
that I see myself. This experience, which to others 
is like the pattern on the tapestry, is to me like the 
confused and disjointed threads of the work behind. 
Not that there is any attempt to pose or to make 
an impression on others ; but the religious life which 
strikes outsiders as satisfactory is, to the experience 
of the person himself, a strenuous and dubious struggle, 
marked by failure and disappointment. 

Who sees or knows the doubts and fears through 
which a foothold of certainty is reached ? Who under- 
stands the veils that fall between the soul and the 
all-desired vision of Christ ? Who apprehends the 
distance from God, which to an outer observer seems 
nearness to Him ? Who reads the heart's bitterness, 
the shame of sin, the sense of defeat, the sickening 
fear that one is accomplishing nothing, and is indeed 
a wholly unprofitable servant ? 

Knowing then how completely I am misread by 
others, and even by those who have the fullest oppor- 
tunity of knowing me, I settle it with myself that 
I can never expect to know in any real sense the 
experience of others. Tempting as it is to divide men 
into believers and unbelievers I cannot accept that 
division. Rather each man is divided between belief 

223 



My Belief 

and unbelief. No one gets farther than the cry, 
" Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief." 

When, therefore, I see the bright religious experience 
of others, I admire it and praise God for it, but I do not 
make any demand that it should be my own. On the 
contrary, I readily admit that I read it on the outside, 
and can well believe that from the inside it wears a 
totally different aspect. My own religious life, my 
relation to God, my belief in Christ, must be deter- 
mined by a transaction, interior and immediate, with the 
unseen. If I turn to look at other men's successes, 
which would discourage me, or other men's failures, 
which would comfort me, I hear a voice which says : 
" What is that to thee ? Follow thou Me." 

I am not unprepared for the discovery that many 
notorious unbelievers have died, and even lived in the 
faith of Christ. I read some time ago of a speech 
delivered in the French Chamber by M. Jaures, the 
Socialist leader, who stands as the type of unbelief and 
opposition to religion. The report said that his words 
drew tears of emotion from devout Catholics who were 
present. On the other hand it is possible that some 
persons with a specious appearance of piety may prove 
to have had none of it at all. At the same time that the 
Socialist Deputy moved Catholic hearers to tears of sym- 
pathy, the Papal representative in Paris, Mgr. Marignani, 
was accumulating papers in his bureau, which, when 
they were found and published, brought a blush of 
shame, not to religious men only, but to everyone who 
can feel for the degradation of our common humanity. 
The Papal Court has often succeeded in producing 

224 



Absence of a Religious Experience 

agents who exactly conform to our Lord's description 
of wolves in sheep's clothing. 

We do well, therefore, to discount all the experiences 
of others, knowing that we see only the appearance, 
and can never enter into the sensations of those who 
have the experiences. We do well to repeat again 
and again, " My experience must be my own. Other 
men's failures cannot help me. Other men's achieve- 
ments must remain known to themselves alone." 

But, these preliminaries settled, we can face this 
simple fact, that we make our own religious experience. 
It is not a gift imparted from without, but an active 
work of the will within. Or, to be more exact, it is 
the assimilation of the gift freely offered to all, made by 
the will, which recognises and appropriates it. 

No man can will to have another's religious experience. 
But every man can will to have his own. His own 
experience comes to him only by his will. We are 
thinking just now of the Christian experience, that 
which in its countless varieties has made the lives of 
the saints, the workers, the servants of Christ in all 
ages. Now, to put it plainly, that experience is open 
to all. Not, as we have seen, that the inward sensation 
can be the same to all, or even to any two members of 
the human race, but the fact of Christianity can pro- 
duce in every human being, who wills it, the experience 
which, to that individual, stands for the common 
Christian experience. 

Every invitation or command which Christianity 
makes is an appeal to the will. When Christ says 
" Follow thou me," it rests with the will to obey. 

225 P 



My Belief 

When He says " Repent and believe the Gospel," He 
calls upon us to do something that is within our 
power. Repentance has been wrapped up in doctrinal 
integuments, which give it a forbidding aspect. But 
it is the simplest possible appeal to the will. I recognise 
the wrong in my life, I will give it up ; I see the fault 
of my character, I will amend it ; I will arise and go to 
my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have 
sinned. Can anyone say that this simple fxerdvoia, 
to use the Greek work, this change of mind or of 
intention, is not within the power of everyone ? True, 
it is not within the power to give effect to the repen- 
tance. The bad habits of years, the enfeebling of the 
will, the moral blindness, make it impossible to carry 
out the " clean life ensuing " which is the complement 
of " the heart-sorrow." But repentance is within every 
man's power. 

The command to repent is, thank God, accompanied 
by the command to believe the Gospel. Is that 
within our power ? Certainly it is, in the sense in 
which the word is given. Perhaps you say, Evidence 
must be offered. How can I believe, by willing to 
believe ? I can only believe what is proved. But that 
demur ignores the meaning of " believe " and of 
" Gospel " in this connection. The Gospel is the 
announcement of God's pardoning love in Christ, the 
forgiveness of your sins, because Christ came into the 
world to save you, and in dying offered up the full and 
sufficient sacrifice for human sin. That is the good 
news which from the beginning has been declared to 
us. And "believe" in this case means "take it as 

226 



Absence of a Religious Experience 

true." Say it is only hypothesis, say you are only 
trying it. You are asked to act on the hypothesis, to 
try what comes to you, if it be true that God so loved 
the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth on Him should have everlasting life. 
How can it be contended that it is beyond anyone's 
power to take this announcement as true, " to act upon 
it " ? Clearly it is a matter of the will. We can take 
any supposition and act on it. If, then, you have 
repented, and recognise what is wrong in you, you 
can, if you will, take this announcement which comes 
to you in the same breath with the call to repentance ; 
you can believe the Gospel. 

Listen to a great preacher pleading with you to do 
this, which is in your power. " Remember," said 
Phillips Brooks, "the Holy Spirit is God, and God 
is love. No man ever asks God to come into his 
heart, and holds his heart open, without God's enter- 
ing. Men and women in the thick of life, do not go 
helpless when there is such help at hand : do not go on 
by yourselves, struggling for truth, and toiling at your 
work, when the Holy Spirit is waiting to show you 
Christ, and to give you in Him the profoundness of 
faith, and the delightfulness of duty." 

The great object of the Christian preacher from the 
beginning has been to induce men to take the step, 
which is in their power, to exert the will, to repent and 
believe the good news. 

I have dwelt for a moment on the initial step of the 
Christian faith, in order to show how, apart from all 
other men's experience, their denials or defences, it lies 

227 p 2 



My Belief 

within the power of each man to gain the experience 
by experiment. No one must attempt to define in a 
formula what the experience is. Enough to say 
that, by the very terms of the experiment, you pro- 
ceed to act as the forgiven and accepted child of your 
heavenly Father, reconciled to Him in Christ. 
Whether that brings you joy, or a deepened sense 
of sin ; whether you share the ecstasy which some 
seem to have, or abide only in the common assur- 
ance without any realising emotion, is nothing to the 
point. You repent and believe the Gospel, and that 
is for you Christianity. 

But after this initial step, every one which follows is 
of the same kind. The commandments of Christ are 
your law of life. You obey them by an act of the will, 
resisting the forces which oppose either in yourself or 
in your surroundings. He bids you receive or take the 
Holy Ghost. You obey. With a deliberate purpose 
you allow the Spirit of God to rule and to shine within 
you, and to shape your conduct in harmony with the 
teaching and the example of Christ. 

He bids you confess Him. You do so. You tell it 
to your friends, you tell it to the Church. It is not 
your experience you confess, but Christ your Saviour. 
You do not avow Him because of the joy ; the joy comes 
only in avowing Him. 

He bids you go and work for Him ; you are to 
carry His Gospel to all creatures. You feel no fitness 
for the work. But you obey. In the fulfilment of that 
commandment, apart from apparent result, lies its great 
reward. 

228 



Absence of a Religious Experience 

The Christian experience, not some one else's but 
your own, the experience that is possible for you and 
suitable to you, thus unfolds as your own deliberate 
surrender to the tiuth of the Gospel, and detailed 
response to its demands. 

One word more before we leave this subject. It may 
reconcile us to the necessary solitariness of our experi- 
ence, if we realise that each soul's spiritual history is a 
particular contribution to a contemplated whole. The 
idea is not easy to grasp ; but it is illustrated both by 
Christ and by Peter and by Paul in ways which bring 
home the certainty of the fact. No two leaves on a 
tree are identical ; no two branches are of the same 
shape or size. Each soul is a separate branch in the 
tree, which fulfils its purpose, not by trying to imitate 
another branch, but by maintaining its own vital and 
unimpeded connection with the stem. Or the simile of 
the building is used : each soul is a stone in the build- 
ing. That simile is so far inept, as in a building there 
are many stones cut to the same pattern, and they differ 
only in the position which they occupy in the building ; 
but it is suitable enough in its reminder that each of us 
is needed in a particular place, and to make any demand 
to occupy another position in the great building would 
be unreasonable. More exact is the analogy of the 
body. There is a spiritual organism ; the limbs have 
their place ; each is different from the rest. If we are 
all to be tempered together in that body, we must be 
content to differ wholly one from another. By the 
sacrifice of individuality we should injure the whole to 
which we belong. 

229 



My Belief 

By this line of reasoning each person may accustom 
himself to feel a unity in diversity, and to accept the 
diversity as a condition of the true unity. We have 
no more warrant for coveting another's spiritual experi- 
ence than for coveting his house or his wife. We are 
encouraged by our faith in Christ all the more to be 
ourselves. 

Matthew Arnold in his pensive way endeavoured to 
learn this great lesson from the serene processes of 
Nature. The aspiration interpreted by Christ is suffi- 
ciently authorised. By losing ourselves in Christ we 
become intensely ourselves. 

Weary of myself and sick of asking 

What I am, and what I ought to be, 
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me 

Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea. 

And a look of passionate desire 

O'er the sea and to the stars I send : 
" Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me, 

Calm me, Ah ! compose me to the end ! 

" Ah ! Once more," I cried, " ye stars and waters, 

On my heart your mighty charm renew ; 
Still, still let me as I gaze upon you, 
Feel my soul becoming vast like you ! ' 

From the intense, clear, star sown vault of heaven, 
Over the lit sea's unquiet way, 
In the rustling night-air came the answer : 

" Would'st thou be as these are ? Live as they ! 

" Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 

Undistracted by the sights they see, 
These demand not that the things without them 

Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 

230 



Absence of a Religious Experience 

" And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll ; 

For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 

" Bounded by themselves and unregardful 
In what state God's other works may be, 

In their own tasks all their powers pouring, 
These attain the mighty life you see." 

O air-born voice ! Long since severely clear 
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear ; 
" Resolve to be thyself ; and know that he 
Who finds himself loses his misery ! " 



231 



XIII 

THE SOCIAL ANARCHY 

On the whole the most widely-spread objection 
to the practice and profession of Christianity to-day is 
the social condition of the people. Embittered by the 
senseless suffering around him, the socialist, or the 
secularist, exclaims: If this is the result of nineteen 
centuries of Christianity, what need you any further 
witness that it is false and inoperative ; false because, if 
it were true, it would be operative ? The nexus of 
economic conditions into which men and women are 
drawn at birth, even in this most advanced and for- 
tunate of Christian countries, is so cruel, that the whole 
system of society seems not only unchristian, but anti- 
christian. The land and the means of production are 
in the hands of a few. The freedom for which our 
fathers fought means in practice the opportunity for the 
strong, the clever, or the unscrupulous to command 
all the resources of society, while the vast mass of men 
and women are beaten down to a minimum of wage, 
and an uncertainty of earning even that, which con- 
demns them to an anxious struggle during the days of 
strength and health, and a cheerless, neglected old age. 
All business, conducted on a basis of unlimited compe- 
tition, forces men into fighting each for his own hand, 

232 



The Social Anarchy 

and silences scruples about the good of competitors 
or others. We are living always as if we were in a 
battle, or a shipwreck, in which each struggles for his 
own victory or life and cannot afford to be generous or 
helpful until his security is assured. 

The system is, strange to say, not the result of 
poverty or failure, but rather of wealth and of success. 
It is the enormous productivity of the modern world, 
the ingenious discoveries which dispense with labour, 
and the untrammelled freedom of the individual, which 
lead to the miseries we deplore. Raw material and 
manufactured goods alike are produced with such 
rapidity, and in such abundance, that there is enough 
for everyone in these islands, to live healthily and com- 
fortably. But a share in the products of the earth and 
of labour can only be given to those who give labour or 
capital. The workers have no capital but their labour, 
and if their labour is not wanted, as frequently happens 
in the fluctuations of manufacturing and markets, they 
have nothing to offer ; they sit at the banquet of life 
with no right to partake ; they can live only by 
doles which humiliate them, or by dishonesty, which 
demoralises them. 

Thus " to provide things honest in the sight of all 
men," a precept which was perfectly practicable in a 
simple society, becomes for many a counsel of perfection 
among ourselves. The clever and industrious, if they 
have health, can provide things — as Webster said, in 
all professions there is plenty of room at the top — but 
" things honest," a competence or wealth which does 
not rob or injure others, a good for oneself which is 

233 



My Belief 

equally a good for all, to secure this is the fortune of 
comparatively few. 

" O terque quaterque beatos 
Agricolas sua si bona norint," 

says Virgil in the growing complexity of Roman 
society. And we should say, Thrice happy they who 
earn their living by honest and useful work about which 
their conscience gives them no uneasiness. But in 
modern English society, especially in cities, sensitive 
people find it hard to lay the flattering unction to their 
souls that their private success is the common good. 
There is a sickening sense of discomfort. The work 
done, the way of doing it, the trade customs, the tricks, 
the glosses, the chicanery, the reserves, make the con- 
science restive. A glance at Christ's laws, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself, or, Do unto others as 
ye would that they should do unto you, brings a vague 
discomfort. Is Christendom governed by Christ ? Or 
is the Christian state a solemn hypocrisy, accepting 
Him in name, denying Him in deed ? Is Christianity a 
delusion, a weak though beautiful idealism, unable to 
cope with the realities of human nature or with the 
facts of life on this planet ? 

Not to have felt this difficulty, not to have raised 
these questions, would argue blindness and insensibility. 
We cannot wonder if many have found the sole answer 
in a moral revolt, and in a bitter surrender of the 
religion, which to them seems to have failed. If I, or 
any other man, can offer an answer to the problem, 
which has proved satisfying, and has led to fruitful 
effort, it is a clear duty to present the answer for the 

234 



The Social Anarchy- 
help of others. My solution, such as it is, I will state 
as convincingly as I am able. 

First of all, I am very sure that something is wrong. 
The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; and 
I know that neither the earth nor its fulness is being 
used in accordance with the wish of the Owner. The 
reader of the daily papers can show day by day that 
God's will is not done on earth. I take up a paper at 
random : here is an account of a man who gives a 
dinner to twelve friends, which costs £1,000 ; on the 
other side of the same sheet is the sordid tale of a man, 
thirty-six years of age, in London, unable to find work, 
and starving. He and his mother could not bring them- 
selves to apply to the relieving officer. He hoped and 
tramped and starved. The post-mortem examination 
revealed that there was no fatty tissue left in the poor 
body at all. There were Dives and Lazarus in modern 
London, just as they were pictured by Jesus. The 
same glaring contrast is repeated in every accurate 
record of a day's life in Christendom. To say that 
God wished the one man to spend £1,000 on one 
dinner, while another man in the same town was 
seeking in vain the means of keeping body and soul 
together, would be a more daring blasphemy than 
Robert Blatchford has ever published. We know 
that God absolutely condemns the condition of things 
which is so indicated ; the condemnation is expressed 
in the brave words of Jesus, which say that Lazarus 
was carried into Abraham's bosom, and the rich man 
lifted up his eyes in hell being in torment. 

The economic arrangements in the Law of Moses 

235 



My Belief 

show the ideal in this matter. Every man had his 
holding of land. It could not be alienated; even if it 
were sold, it reverted to him at the end of fifty years. 
There can be no reasonable doubt that, according to 
God's will, every man would have his own piece of land, 
and would be obliged to have it, enough to raise for 
himself the food and clothing needed for himself and 
his family. When the distribution of things was altered 
by the division of labour, and some tilled the soil, while 
others engaged in manufacturing or trading ; the primal 
right should not have been disturbed, the fee simple of 
his own bit of land should have remained in the hand 
of each. 

No one can imagine that it is God's will, when a city 
grows up, that the land on which it stands should 
belong to individuals, who can quietly appropriate 
the unearned increment, the increased value due to the 
labour and enterprise of others. However innocent 
the individual owner may be, in the judgement of the 
kingdom of God this ownership is robbery, and the 
misery and degradation which result from it are the 
result of a fundamental violation of the commandment, 
" Thou shalt not steal." The slums of a modern city 
are not the result of God's laws, but a result of breaking 
them. 

No one thinks that the sweated industries express 
God's will. He would not have one of these " little 
ones" perish. A Labour Board in each industry fixing 
a living wage, and preventing any employment of labour 
without due payment for it, would be the irreducible 
minimum of justice which His law would demand. 

236 



The Social Anarchy 

These are but examples which serve to illustrate the 
principle. The followers of Jesus are bound to pray, 
" Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it 
is in heaven " ; and therefore they are bound to work and 
to sacrifice, to correct these obvious violations of the 
will of God. To admit that the present state of things 
is in harmony with His will, would be to blaspheme 
Him, and to repudiate all the teaching and example of 
Him whom He sent into the world to save it. 

But there is a point which is often missed. The 
reform of social abuses is not the direct work of 
Christianity; it must be effected by Christian men in 
their capacity as citizens, by the methods of education 
and legislation which are put into their hands. This is 
made evident by Christ himself. When a man asked 
Him to speak to his brother to divide the inheritance 
with him, Christ said that was not His function. He 
distinguishes between the things of Caesar and the 
things of God. His kingdom is not of this world. 
Christianity is a message to the soul ; it proposes to 
make that right with God, and efficient for its work in 
life ; it is no more a reproach to Christianity that it is 
not a political or socialistic propaganda, than it is a 
reproach to a teacher that he leaves medicine to the 
doctor. 

Christianity lives in, lives through, and masters, all 
conditions of human life. But it would lose its power 
if it were identified with any scheme of government, 
political organisation, or economic theory. It did not 
liberate the slaves, but treated them as brothers. It 
did not destroy Caesar, but aimed at converting him. It 

237 



My Belief 

is not republican or monarchical, but claims both poli- 
tical methods. It is not socialistic nor individualist, 
though it reaches society through the individual. It 
will not decide between protection and free trade. 

But as the soul is thoroughly Christian, receiving 
and expressing the life of God, it will, as citizen, and 
member of a political community, labour for that social 
justice, mercy and love, which are the essence of 
Christianity. The mistake has already been made of 
identifying the heavenly doctrine with a particular 
theory of the State. Constantine in this way exploited 
Christianity for the Empire ; and the Pope more fatally 
exploited it for that more ambitious Empire, the Papacy. 
Kings, like Charles I. or the Czar, have exploited Chris- 
tianity for the divine right. The disaster to Christianity 
becomes patent enough, when the king of divine right 
is beheaded, or when the czar of divine right plunges 
his country into convulsion and ruin. 

We must not repeat the mistake by identifying Chris- 
tianity with Socialism. Socialists will no doubt be 
glad enough to exploit it. But it cannot be ; for 
Christianity, identified with Socialism, would fall with 
its fall, and be entangled in its blunders and 
disillusionment. 

But the Christian, in so far as he is genuinely 
Christian, will bring to bear all his thoughts and 
influence and power, to change the social conditions 
and bring them into harmony with the will of God. 
If that endeavour is called for convenience " socialism," 
he will be a socialist. If, on the other hand, socialism 
is taken to be a radical, and immediate political 

238 



The Social Anarchy 

reconstruction, a redistribution of the means of pro- 
duction, collectivism of capital* and equal payment of 
workers, not according to their work but according to 
their needs, he may, as a politician, be a socialist, but 
he will be careful to distinguish between his religion, 
which is assured and authoritative, and his political 
view, which is tentative and experimental. 

The reasonableness of this position ought to be clear 
to every one who has realised the fundamental contrast 
between religion and politics. Christianity is religious ; 
Socialism is political. Christian Socialism does not 
mean that Christianity is Socialism ; it can only 
legitimately mean the political view which some 
sincere Christians advocate. There may be other 
Christians, equally earnest and honest, who are not 
Socialists. Just as a Christian who distrusts Socialism 
should respect and love a Christian Socialist, so a 
Christian, who has adopted the Socialistic theory for 
the remedy of our social troubles, should recognise the 
rights of Christians who cannot agree with him on 
economic and political questions. 

The need for thus insisting on a distinction between 
the two planes becomes evident from this one con- 
sideration : Religion, to be of use, must be available at 
once ; its sanctions and precepts must mould our life 
from the beginning. Social reconstruction, on the 
other hand, is a work of years and even of generations. 
Some writers, like Mr. Kidd, in his " Social Evolution," 
regard the process as one that goes on of itself under 
the guidance of an unseen principle, very far beyond 
our control. But even if our active and conscious 

239 



My Belief 

co-operation be required, we at the most can do but little. 
By earnest study and effective work we may contribute 
a mite to the great consummation which will come by 
and bye. Meanwhile .our little life is rounded by a 
span. We find ourselves in the nexus, social and 
economical, in which we were born. We have to 
battle with it, and face its moral or spiritual influences, 
bringing growth or degradation. 

We cannot wait for, or insist on, Utopia, before we 
begin to live. We cannot defer our religious decisions 
until we are restored to the Paradise we have lost. 

Whatever may be our complaint against life, we have 
to live it ; its conditions, however reprehensible, must 
be faced. 

Carlyle was once told about a lady of intellect and 
sentiment that she had made the remark " I accept the 
Universe ! " His grim reply was, " 'gad, she'd better." 
We really have no alternative. 

While, therefore, we devote ourselves, as Christians, 
to the bettering and reconstruction of society, we must 
independently turn our attention to religion. Neither 
for ourselves nor others is it good for us to forget our 
personal responsibilities, or the power which we have 
over our destiny. The constant insistence on the effect 
which bad surroundings have on us, as it is preached 
by socialism of all degrees, has one very deleterious 
effect ; it lessens the sense of personal responsibility, 
and weakens the effort which is made to control 
circumstances. Multitudes of deluded people are led 
to attribute their failure and uselessness to environ- 
ment. They content themselves with reviling society, 

240 



The Social Anarchy 

or capital, or the upper classes, or the churches, instead 
of bravely facing their own weaknesses and faults. 

Now, however earnestly we may strive to alter 
environment, we can never lay too much stress on the 
power which each one has to overcome, to defeat, to 
mould, to transform the conditions in which he finds 
himself. 

"It is the excellent foppery of the world that we 
make guilty of our disorders, the sun, the moon and the 
stars," says Edmund in King Lear, referring to the 
exploded superstition of Astrology. But that excellent 
foppery continues in another form. No one in England 
would ascribe his failure in life to being born under an 
evil star, or to an unfavourable conjunction of planets. 
But many unhappy beings, who are a burden to them- 
selves and to others, blame heredity, environment, 
education, the bad customs of trade or of society, 
for disasters which are due entirely to their own weak- 
ness or folly. Heredity is not a force to master us, but 
to be overcome. Our environment will shape us if we 
let it, but we have the power to alter it. All the bad 
customs around us cannot bind the resolute and heroic 
soul ; they are to him like the withes on the arms 
of Samson. When the soul awakes and determines 
to be right and to do right, the most formidable 
obstacles melt into thin air, and reveal themselves to 
be the phantoms which they really are. 

" Make thou thy life, not let thy life make thee," 
is the needed tonic of our day, when the exaggerations 
of social reformers have spread the notion that our life 
makes us in our own despite. 

241 Q 



My Belief 

It is wholesome to go back to the vigorous times, 
which made great characters, and to read in Sir 
Thomas Browne, " Behold within thee the long train 
of thy triumphs. Chain up the unruly legion of thy 
breast ; lead thine own captivity captive and be Caesar 
within thyself." 

The Socialist propaganda means well, but the mischief 
it does in weakening individual responsibility, and in 
repressing efforts at self-mastery and self-culture, is 
at present far greater than any betterment it has 
produced in the environment. A vigorous teaching, 
applied to adults as well as children, of the moral 
power which is latent in every one of us would make a 
society capable of Socialism. But at present the indi- 
vidual is unmanned. He never blames himself. Undis- 
ciplined, whining at life and at the world, he has not 
the heroic stuff which transforms society, breaks bad 
customs, or even secures for himself a modicum 
of moral progress. A populace fed on the windy 
generalities, the subtle flatteries, and the denunciatory 
bitterness, of Socialism are the last people in the world 
of whom a sound Socialist state could be formed. 
Socialism can only succeed if individuals are morally 
disciplined ; self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
these three alone lead life to any victorious issue ; with- 
out them Socialism would only be slavery in another 
form . 

There is a further demoralisation incidental to a 
Socialist propaganda. The insistence laid on material 
things, as if life would be complete were the distribu- 
tion of wealth fair, is an insult to humanity. It leads 

242 



The Social Anarchy 

men to fix their hopes on a goal, which when realised 
brings men no nearer happiness or goodness. The 
population of New Zealand enjoys precisely what 
Socialism demands. Everyone has enough food, 
clothing, and housing, and leisure. What is the result ? 
A kind of dyspepsia, an universal passion for gambling, 
an exclusive spirit, which shuts out from their earthly 
paradise the sad and hunted victims of European 
civilisation. The half-million Anglo-Saxons in New 
Zealand, with every advantage that Socialism desires, 
enjoying the finest climate and scenery in the world, 
are neither better, nor happier, than any other popula- 
tion of the same size in the Empire. They do not 
produce more literature, or music, or pictures, or 
religious ideas, or spiritual powers, than the people of 
Manchester. 

No; as Carlyle said: "It is a calumny on men to 
say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope 
of pleasure, recompense, sugar-plums of any kind in 
this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there 
lies something nobler. It is not to taste sweet things, 
but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself 
under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the 
poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of 
doing that, and the dullest day drudge kindles into a 
hero." 

Convince a boy that he can master his circumstances, 
and is indeed here to do so, and you have done more for 
him than if you give him an allotment in El Dorado. 

What religion does for us, the religion of Christ, 
is this : It declares that the noble life is possible 

243 Q 2 



My Belief 

just in these conditions. These conditions, produced 
by a rampant commercialism and an untrammelled 
competition, are here to be overcome. Just as 
in the age of militarism the hero approved him- 
self by vanquishing the foe, so in this age of political 
economy the hero shows his mettle by rising superior 
to the obstructions and entanglements. Assuredly you 
are called to be a hero, a good soldier of Jesus Christ, 
precisely in this baffling and discouraging environment. 

While, therefore, we are seeking to alter society and 
to bring it into harmony with the will of God, nay, as 
the only effectual way by which that can in any degree 
be done, we ourselves must play the man, and must 
encourage all our fellows to do the same. To do this 
in any real sense, religion is needed, Christianity is 
needed, Christ is needed. 

There are two pinions on which the soul can rise, 
surmounting all the deadly complications of even our 
present disordered life, and reaching the upper air, from 
which it is possible to work for a general reformation. 
On these level wings none need despair of life here or 
hereafter : (i) The one is the fixed resolve not to violate 
conscience ; (2) the other is an implicit trust in Christ 
as a living Presence, who can always deliver, and guide, 
and save. 

(1) The enervated manhood of to-day forgets the 
heroic temper of the first Christians. They lived in a 
corrupt society, in which every custom was a violation 
of the higher law which they had accepted. They were 
bound to resist, even to blood, striving against sin. 
They refused the slightest compliance ; they were ready 

244 



The Social Anarchy 

at all times to die for their faith. In that hard and cruel 
world, which scorned the weak and the untaught, and 
lived on a broad basis of actual slavery, they learnt to 
show brotherly love, to honour and succour one another. 
Martyrdom was not uncommon ; but the confessor was 
almost as common as the Christian. 

Men of this type change the current of events, and 
alter the temper of the world. 

Resolve that, cost what it may, you will not violate 
your conscience ; that, though starvation stare you in 
the face, you will follow that inward light, and you are 
already on the way to victory. 

(2) But that heroic temper cannot be maintained, or 
justified in experience, unless it is accompanied by a 
lively faith in Christ, as One who is able to deliver. 
It is the quiet assurance : " Be of good cheer, I have 
overcome the world," which puts heart into us. Maran- 
atha was the early Christian watchword, indicating the 
nearness, the presence, of the Lord. An unflinching 
conviction that He is at hand, to ratify the noble 
resolution, to vanquish impossibilities, to open the way 
where it seems blocked with enormous mountain- 
barriers, will reach a certain success. There is no 
complication of circumstances, no deadly coil of evil, 
out of which Christ cannot deliver us. And a life built 
up on such deliverances is lived in that world of 
spiritual victory from which the forces must be derived 
for overcoming the vicious conditions of our time. 

If all men believed absolutely in Christ, all the social 
troubles would cease ; brotherly love, and the wish to 
save, would dominate the relations of men. But the 

245 



My Belief 

wished-for change must be wrought by those who do 
believe absolutely in Christ ; they must be, as He said, 
the salt of the earth, which saves it from corruption, 
the light of the world which leads it out of its confusion 
and error. 



246 



XIV 
THE RETURN TO PAGANISM 

In the fourth century the Emperor Julian endeavoured 
to reverse the decision which had made the Empire 
Christian. He restored the temples of the gods and 
revived the cultus. He used all the powers of his 
autocratic position to repress the Church. The tradi- 
tional Vicisti, Galilae expresses the result, whether the 
dying Julian said it or not. The Galilsean conquered 
the Emperor of the West. 

In the half-century before the Reformation again 
an attempt was made to return to Paganism. This 
time it was not the work of an emperor or of a 
government. It was far more subtle. The fall of 
Constantinople in 1453 brought into Italy the scholars 
from the East. The ancient literature of Greece and 
Rome was studied with enthusiasm, and it cast its 
spell over the strongest minds. Valla, Filelso, Becca- 
delli, Poggio, did their best to revive the pre-Christian 
ideals ; they regarded everything Christian as bar- 
barian. Cicero was more highly esteemed than the 
Gospels. Ovid's " Art of Love " was read with more 
devotion than 1 Cor. xiii. With the learning of the 
ancient world the vices of the ancient world revived. 
It is not even possible in a modern book actually 
to portray the morals of the Renaissance. All moral 

247 



My Belief 

restraint was gone. Every breach of the ethical 
demands of Christianity was regarded with unaffected 
delight. These unblushing Pagans, whose writings 
could not now be published, were in the employ 
of the Popes, and received the last sacraments of the 
Church like other men. The Popes themselves became 
Pagan. Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X. repre- 
sent Pagan ideals and Pagan morals seated in the 
Papal chair. The form of Catholicism remained, but 
Christianity was literally gone. 

The spirit of that return to Paganism is exactly 
caught by Browning in his poem, " The Bishop orders 
his tomb at St. Praxed's Church." The dying bishop 
gives his natural sons the command to make his tomb 
an artistic rival to that of the man whom he had hated, 
that for all time in death his monument might triumph 
over his adversary, while he lying there dead could 
hear the mutter of the Mass all day long. It is 
Paganism without its naivete and beauty. But there 
is a more striking evidence of that Pagan reaction 
in the church of Sigismondo Malatesta at Rimini. 
The saints of that shrine, whose bones are preserved 
in the marble sarcophagi, are the philosophers or 
scholars of the time, who were innocent of Christian 
faith. The sculptures in the chapels are largely 
Venuses and Cupids and Graces. Everywhere is the 
monogram, which looks at first glance like the I.H.S. 
of St. Bernardino of Siena, Jesus Hominum Salvator. 
But it is really I.S., and stands for Sigismondo and 
the courtesan Isotta, to whom he was attached. There 
the visitor may see to-day the paganisation and the 

248 



The Return to Paganism 

profound moral corruption of the Renaissance. It 
seems in presence of the facts just indicated, that, but 
for the Reformation, Christianity would have sunk 
back into heathenism. 1 

And now in our own day there, is a return to 
Paganism of another kind. Again it is not the work 
of governments or conquerors. It is not the mission 
of Islam, nor, as yet, the irruption of the yellow race. 
It is not this time the discovery of an ancient literature 
or the sighing after a forgotten culture. It is rather 
the result of a very rapid extension of our knowledge 
of the universe, and an immense growth of the means 
of enjoyment. The religious truth of Europe has not 
adapted itself to the scientific truth, which rushes on 
from discovery to discovery with the impetuosity of 
a great river. And at the same time the prodigious 
growth of the instruments of production, and the 
mechanical contrivances for the convenience of life, 
has numbed the souls of the present generation to the 
things of God and to the ways of the Cross. 

Listen to an allegory : — 

" The Spirit of Modern Progress one day called up a human being, 
and said to him : ' I perceive that you are discontented with your life. 
You long for things beyond your power. Tell me, now, what it is that 
will make you happy, and I will give it to you.' 

" The human being stopped a moment to reflect before he replied : 

1 In the " Geschichte der Papste," by Ludwig Pastor, the history of 
this period is faithfully given from the Roman Catholic standpoint. 
The picture is more lurid, the wickedness of the Popes is more clearly 
delineated, and the hopeless corruption of the whole system is more 
conclusively proved, than in any Protestant work with which I am 
acquainted. 

249 



My Belief 



' If you have such wonderful power at your command, then make my 
life more comfortable, for I am weary of it.' 

" ' You ask what is easy,' replied the Spirit ; and thereupon he gave 
the human being beautiful cities, with streets that were sometimes 
clean, and police departments that were occasionally efficient. He 
gave him handsome houses with modern plumbing and electric lights, 
and a thousand other things that made life comfortable. 

" ' Now, ' said the Spirit, ' do you wish for anything more ? for you 
have but to ask and I will give it to you.' 

'"I should wish,' replied the human being, 'that my business life 
were more comfortable.' 

" • That, too, is easy, ' answered the Spirit ; and thereupon he gave 
the human being telephones and telegraphs, railroads and steamships. 

" And after this the human being asked that his pleasures be made 
more comfortable, and thereupon the Spirit gave him fireproof theatres 
and comic operas, motor cars and yachts. 

" Then again the Spirit asked, ' Do you still desire more ? ' and the 
human being replied, ' Yes ; make my religion more comfortable.' 

'"That is simplicity itself,' answered the Spirit; and thereupon he 
gave the human being magnificent churches, good preachers, and 
twenty-minute sermons. 

" ' And now, 1 asked the Spirit, ' are you satisfied at last ? Or is there 
something yet lacking to your happiness ? ' 

" ' Yes,' answered the human being ; ' my conscience troubles me. 
Make that comfortable.' 

" ' That is the easiest thing of all,' said the Spirit ; and thereupon 
he did away with the personal devil and gave the human being an 
easy-going summer and a hell that made a comfortable winter resort. 

" At that the human being fell back into his easy chair and remarked, 
' Really, my dear Spirit, you have made religion so comfortable that 
I shall hardly need think of it," and he buried himself in the Sunday 
newspaper. 

" As for the Spirit, he began to float out of the window. 

" ' Where are you going ? ' asked the human being. 

" ' To see my father.' said the Spirit. ' He is dying.' 

" ' And who is your father ? ' 

'"The Spirit of Nobility.' replied the Spirit of Modern Progress. 
He is on his last legs.' " 

This is the nature of the modern relapse into Paganism. 
There is no Julian, filled with a passionate longing 

250 



The Return to Paganism 

for a vanished past. There is no Poggio, gloating 
over the dignity and beauty of an ancient literature. 
There is only a Nietzsche, a genius with unbalanced 
mind, raving against morality as well as religion, 
because it trammels the freedom of the spirit. Or 
there is a Maeterlinck returning to an arbitrary mysticism 
as the guide of life, shutting his eyes to Christianity 
as if it had never been. Or there is a Madame Blavatsky 
bringing the occultism of the East to supplant the 
religion of the West. Thus the return to Paganism 
is manifold ; not a return to a particular system of 
Paganism — that is to go back now too far! — but a 
quiet ignoring of Christianity, a mingled dislike and 
contempt for the Christian Church, a repudiation of 
Christ, His Person, His work, and His teaching, above 
all His Cross, which again to the Greek of to-day is 
foolishness. 

Thoughtful and intelligent Europe is now non- 
Christian. The working classes of Europe are 
anti-Christian. The Christian verities are dismissed; 
the Christian ideal is derided. The purity, the 
humility, the dependence on God, the hope of im- 
mortality, the belief in heaven, are to these moderns a 
weariness. What they want is the lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eye, the vainglory of life. 

What a phenomenon of our times is the life of Lafcadio 
Hearn! Brought up in the Levant and in Ireland, 
knowing Christianity only as Catholicism, he turned 
with a sick loathing from Christ and the Cross. As a 
boy he found pictures of the elder gods in a book and 
was ravished with them. He hated Christianity as ugly. 

251 



My Belief 

The words " pagan," " heathen," always suggested to 
him beauty and freedom and joy. He became a 
Japanese, and wrote brilliant descriptions of his adopted 
people. He hated the missionaries who brought them 
the Gospel. Married to a Japanese wife, he expected 
the recognition and love of his chosen countrymen. 

He died in weary disappointment, rejected by the 
people to whom he had given his life. There is the 
forlorn image of our times. Christianity is rejected, 
but there is no substitute. Mrs. Besant astonishes the 
Hindoos by assuring them that their religion is the 
substitute for Christianity. Someone will presently com- 
mend Buddha to us, and build a joss-house in London. 
Enterprising Moslem missionaries would find a fair field 
in England, where the masses are quite free from any 
prejudice in favour of Christianity. And there is no 
doubt that if a classical architect would build a temple 
of Apollo, and shrines for Aphrodite, they would have 
their worshippers among the people who now spend their 
Sundays on the river or in motor cars, and the masses 
who now worship, if anywhere, in the public houses. 

With the Pagan ideals come also the Pagan morals. I 
have before me an article in the Publishers' Circular, 
for January 18, 1908, entitled, "Education and Immoral 
Books." It is the bitter cry of the publishing trade, 
complaining of the toleration and approbation given to 
impure books ; it asserts " a rising tide of iniquity in 
the shape of immoral literature, especially in English 
fiction." The modern Pagan revels and wallows 
in impurity. His heart empty of God, scornful of 
Christ, blaspheming the Holy Ghost, delights in tales 

2S2 



The Return to Paganism 

of immorality. His appetite is gross. Innuendoes do 
not suffice. He demands the particular and detailed 
account of the bestial and the obscene, that he may gloat 
over them. What can the publishers do? " The books 
sell because there are readers who want them, educated 
people ; and their wants are supplied by educated 
people, writers, men and women ; and the books are 
reviewed by educated reviewers." 

For many centuries the Christian standard was 
accepted, though men fell below it. We were born 
into a society which expected us to be God-fearing, 
honest and pure, to serve one another in love, and to 
live as those who expect a judgement and an eternal 
life. But our children to-day are born into a changed 
world. They find no Christian atmosphere awaiting 
them. The glamour is not over the good, but over the 
evil. Pagan morals are not only practised but defended. 
Self-indulgence, vice, pride, lying, are shameless and 
unabashed. 

Christians are a minority, derided by the intellectual, 
railed at by the workers, ignored by the fashionable. To 
be a Christian involves much of the same difficulty and 
persecution as it did in the days of Decius and Diocletian. 
There is no European emperor to persecute, but society, 
ubiquitous and omnipotent, is frankly against Christ. 

It is not of course that Christianity is disproved. No 

fresh argument is brought against it. By the admission 

of the Pagan writers themselves 

" Still stands thy ancient sacrifice, 
A broken and a contirte heart." 

The way of faith and hope and love, of self-sacrifice and 

253 



My Belief 

service, of justice and mercy and humility is as sure as 
ever. But it is become again a strait path leading to 
life, and few there be which find it. Christianity is 
as true as ever, Christ as indisputable, the Cross as 
manifest. But the age repudiates it all. The age wants 
money, and comfort, and amusements, and pleasant vices. 
It objects to any suggestion that life is earnest or that 
death is near, that we are sowing now for a reaping 
by-and-by, that we must all appear before the judge- 
ment seat of Christ. 

For this result no doubt the Church is to blame. 
The Church is largely Pagan. In Catholic countries 
many people know nothing of the Christianity of the 
New Testament. They can only judge the religion by 
characteristics which have no place in Christianity, 
priestly practices and tyrannies, and rapacities, worship 
of Virgin and saints, and the like. In the Greek Church 
there is much to justify the impending revolt. I recall 
a feeling which came over me in Athens ; after studying 
the noble remains of ancient art, the ruins of the Acro- 
polis, the temple of Theseus and the sculptured reliefs 
of the Ceramicus, I felt a strange and sickening revolt 
againt the tawdry mummery of the Orthodox Church, 
which seemed not only lifeless but deadening. The com- 
monness of this ci-devant Christianity stood in painful 
contrast with the splendours of Pericles, Pheidias and 
Socrates. The Pagan elements in our English Chris- 
tianity, the worship of respectability, the caste distinc- 
tions, the ritual, the ignorance and mental poverty of 
the teachers ; the tedium of preaching, and the hollowness 
of ceremonies ; the unreality of much profession ; and 

254 



The Return to Paganism 

the bigotry of much zeal ; may largely excuse that 
relapse into Paganism which is manifest in England, 
though not in so advanced a stage as on the Continent. 

What then is to be said in the present situation ? 
Reader, you have to choose. Jesus or Barabbas ? The 
Jews chose Barabbas, and the result of their choice 
appears to this day. In China it is, Christ or Confucius ? 
And the company of those who choose Christ is pre- 
senting in China such a spectacle of renewed life and 
spiritual energy, that the hope of a Christian China rises 
high in the hearts of the closest observers. 

Here in England the choice is, Jesus or Paganism. 
Undoubtedly the glamour is for the moment over the 
Paganism ; Apollo and Aphrodite cast their seductive 
glances at you. Pan sits again by the river, blowing 
his pipe ; and you feel in your blood the strange, 
earthy attraction of an outworn creed. But these gods 
are dead, while Jesus lives. The choice is essentially 
now as ever between death and life. The glamour of 
Paganism, whatever its form, whether it is indulgence 
of the flesh, or the dream of a Christless art, covers 
decay, degradation and death. But Jesus has the 
words of eternal life ; He has the note of the eternal 
world. He frankly invites you to take up a cross to 
follow Him, but the way of the cross is the way of 
light and of life. 

It cannot be too bluntly stated, that the choice has 
to be made. Broad is the way that leads to death, and 
many walk in it. Strive to enter in at the strait gate. 

In this connection long argument is useless. We 
can only display the contrast and the choice, and each 

255 



My Belief 

must choose for himself. The issue was stated in the 
plainest terms from the beginning of Christianity. It 
cannot be better stated now. " Love not the world, 
neither the things that are in the world. If any man 
love the world the love of the Father is not in him. 
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and 
the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of 
the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth 
away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of 
God abideth for ever." 1 

Intrinsically nothing more can be said. The Pagan- 
ism of our day is only the recrudescence of the world in 
its eternal antagonism to the Father, a recrudescence 
due to the astonishing discoveries of powers and posses- 
sions, which seem to offer to mankind unbounded 
physical enjoyment. But it is a delusion. The piles 
of money, the indulgence of the appetites, bring no 
more satisfaction to-day than they did to Petronius or 
Apicius. The motor car can no more offer permanent 
delight than the chariot in which the Roman noble 
drove furiously along the Appian Way. 

The world cannot satisfy your heart, because you are 
God's children ; only your Father can satisfy your heart. 
The world, with its infinite variety of beauty and 
interest, for the individual at any rate, is evanescent. 
It fades as you behold it, because the eye grows dim, 
and the heart sickens. 

The alternative is Jesus, because Jesus brings you 
to God. He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father. 
And you have to choose. 

i i john ii. 15-17. 

256 



The Return to Paganism 

Jesus means the discovery of your sin, the confession 
and the contrition, the forgiveness and the deliverance 
from your sin. Jesus means cleansing, and reconcilia- 
tion to God, the filial relation restored and realised. 
Jesus means living in the world as the child of God, 
and expecting in the world to come the house with the 
many mansions. That is the way of the Cross. It is 
light and life, though it seems to be darkness and 
mortification. 

This you can choose, as against the world. It is — 
Pan or Jesus ? It is — Christ or Diana ? It cannot be 
both ; it is essentially and eternally one or the other. 
If it is not Jesus it is Pan. If it is not Christ it is 
Diana or Aphrodite. If it is not the Father it is the 
world. 

Write out the words which were just quoted : " Love 
not the world/' etc. Put them up where the alterna- 
tive meets you morning by morning, as you awake. 
Face that alternative resolutely and persistently. Press 
it upon the mental retina. The Father or the world ? 
Which is it to be ? 

The young man in the Gospels had that alternative 
presented to him. He chose the world. He had great 
possessions. He could not bring himself to part with 
them for Jesus. Jesus loved him, and was grieved for 
him, but could not help him. He had chosen. Look 
at Watts' picture of that man. How rich is his dress, 
how stately is his mien. But where is the face ? It is 
averted, it is hidden in shame. For the choice is 
made. 

So exactly you have to choose. There is the world, 

257 R 



My Belief 

and no doubt it has its attractions, its fascinations. 
There is the music and the laughter, and the stage is 
all aglow. There are the dances and the dinners, the 
marriages, the entertainments. At a first glance you 
are naturally ravished by it. You are tempted to 
choose it. And the alternative ? The Son of Man on 
a Cross dying for the sins of the world, your sin ! 
Who would choose that suffering form ; who would not 
be scandalised by the Cross ? How can you wish by 
that rude instrument to let the world, the beautiful 
world, be crucified to you, and yourself crucified to it ? 

And yet that is the choice which you are counselled 
to make. As truly as ever in the past : " This world is 
all a fleeting show, for man's illusion given." The 
veil of Maya is over it all. You trust it, you lean on it, 
and it breaks through. You follow it with eager hands, 
and it vanishes like the mirage. 

And that cross covers all reality, peace, purity, love, 
joy, satisfaction. The cross crucifies your sins, but 
brings you to your Father. The cross averts your eyes 
from the delights of the world, to fix them on the one 
joy that is, and that lasts. 

Can you choose ? Will you choose ? In face of the 
vast apostasy, and an almost universal rejection of 
Jesus, and choice of the world, will you choose Him ? 
Will you believe ? Will you leave your sins and your- 
self to follow Him ? As you make the choice, as the 
decision is registered in your mind, and your heart 
turns wholly to Him, what a wonderful thing happens ! 
What is this strange sense of pardon, purification and 
victory, this discovery of the goal and the home, the 

258 



The Return to Paganism 

bosom of the Father ? What is this delighted recog- 
nition of the meaning of life, the work to do, the things 
to seek ? What is this inward fountain of cleansing 
and power ? 

This is that gift of the Holy Spirit which is imparted 
to those who believe in Him, the specific, promised 
seal of the soul's reconciliation and acceptance with 
God. 

Now in your newly found joy — the scales fallen from 
your eyes — look again at the world and its gods. Did 
that tinsel show attract you ? Did those hollow images 
covering the uncleanness appear beautiful ? It seems 
almost incredible. Beauty, truth, and love are every- 
where ; but they are not of the world. It has passed 
away : they remain. 

" He that hath felt the spirit of the highest 
Cannot confound or doubt him or deny, 
Yea with one breath, O world, though thou deniest, 
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I." 



259 R 2 



XV 

THE OLD PROBLEM OF SUFFERING AND 

SIN 

It is a very old problem. And in discussing the 
difficulties of religious thought some time ago, I omitted 
it, from the feeling that here we have an insoluble 
difficulty, a primal mystery which wise men face as a 
fact, though they despair of explaining it. But I was 
immediately reminded by several people that this 
ancient difficulty is still the most pressing of difficulties. 
The human mind cannot accept it and pass on. There 
is suffering in the world ; how can God be kind ? 
There is sin in the world, how can God be good ? 

Here a mind set on denial and unbelief finds ample 
material. It has only to collect countless instances of 
evil, physical evil, or moral evil, and to say : " This is 
the world, which is the work of your beneficent and 
holy God ! Either He is not all powerful, or He is not 
good. If He were good and powerful He could not 
tolerate this. Which of us would inflict on any creature, 
however mean, the misery which life and death, the 
universe as it is — or, as your Christian doctrine implies, 
God — inflicts on human beings ? " 

That argument is so forcible and so plausible that in 
its first impact, it carries conviction to many, especially 
the young. The infidel has an easy task. The material 

260 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

at hand is inexhaustible. And in every human heart 
there is a ready response to infidelity. 

But suppose it occurs to us to retort on the 
infidel : " You have given an appalling picture of 
the evil of the world, the pain which men endure, 
the sins which they commit. Do we understand 
you to argue from this that there is no God, or that 
there is a God, who, as the author of this evil, is a 
fiend? 

"You imply that there is no God? Then there is no 
Being who pities us in our evil plight, or can help us 
out of it, or cares if we remain in it for ever. You 
present to us a universe, unconscious, immoral, a vast 
machine, which without intelligence or purpose grinds 
out for us this miserable existence which you depict. 
There is no escape, there is no redress. What, then, 
is your gospel ? What do you propose ? You have 
taken pains to show us that life is a scene of pain and 
wickedness, and there is no God. What is there, then ? 
In short, there is you, you the infidel. You offer your- 
self to us with your fierce invectives against life and 
God, as the substitute for religion, as the highest and 
noblest product of the universe. We cannot pretend 
to be grateful to you. Nay, we heartily wish you to 
take yourself off. We know our sufferings and sins 
without your help; and you have no remedy, no allevia- 
tion to offer. 

" Or, you imply that there is a God, or there are Gods ; 
but they or He are devils, working to produce this world 
of suffering and sin. Is that your implication ? If it is 
not, what do you mean ? What is the purpose of your 

261 



My Belief 

argument ? Well, then, your gospel is, that we live in 
a devil-made and devil-ruled world. Thank you for 
nothing. O eloquent and convincing infidel lecturer, 
you are, then, after all, only a missionary of devils, 
bent on asserting their reign. Your gospel is the good 
news of hate instead of love, of despair instead of hope. 
What help can you give us in our misery ? What 
power has your truth, or negation, to make either 
life or death feasible and worthy for us ? If this is 
all you have to say, poor son of Adam, and advocate of 
devils, why not hold your peace, and fret out your fury 
in silence and solitude ? " 

Thus the argument of infidelity is only powerful 
until one attempts to retort. When the positive 
effects of denial are realised, the hollowness and 
futility of that kind of argument appears. Perhaps, 
therefore, no wise person who is perfectly sane ever 
thinks of advancing the argument of infidelity. In 
this mysterious and difficult world, with its deep 
shadows and bewildering cross-lights, we are all bent 
on finding a clue, a light, a practical guide, to help not 
ourselves only, but others. And we know, without 
evidence, that no such help is even conceivable unless 
Reason rules the Universe, unless that Reason is good, 
unless it is love, unless it is working out a final good 
through all forms of evil. Whatever therefore can help 
us to faith in such a moral order, or such a ruler of life 
and destiny, we verily thankfully hail. Whatever impels 
us to throw our own personal energy into the cause of 
the Reason, the goodwill, the love, the beneficent 
purpose of the Universe, is very welcome to us. 

262 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

What works in the opposite direction is morbid and 
poisonous. 

In a shipwreck a man who goes about represent- 
ing the terrors of the deep, the parting planks, and 
the watchful sharks, would deserve to be thrown 
over to them. The only man wanted by his fellows 
is he who inspires hopes, who mans the boats, 
fits on the lifebelts, and points to the shore within 
sight. 

Our condition in life, according to that presentation 
of evil which constitutes the difficulty under discussion, 
is that of a shipwrecked crew. The welcomest person 
therefore is he who breathes hope and courage, speaks 
of remedies, and directs our thought to the security of 
the shore. 

Now approaching the problem in this way, my first 
observation is, that it is mischievous to exaggerate the 
pain and sin in the world. We must always remember 
that pain is here only in conjunction with pleasure, and 
sin only in conjunction with goodness. No scientific 
observer can isolate either of the pair of contrasts. 
The relative proportion of good and evil is a subject of 
dispute. There is the easy optimism of Leibnitz or of 
Emerson which believes that this is the best of all 
possible worlds. There is, on the other hand, the 
gloomy pessimism of Schopenhauer, which sees the 
solution of human problems only in the extinction of 
the human race. These are the extremes into which 
genius and unbridled speculation run. But the vast 
preponderance of men, probably ninety-nine out of a 
hundred, are neither optimists nor pessimists. Taking 

263 



My Belief 

life as it comes, and estimating life as a whole, they 
show that they think it good by the way they cling to 
it, and, except in gloomy moments, they admit that the 
pleasure far outweighs the pain, the good decidedly 
exceeds the evil. 

If we could direct a questionnaire to the human race, 
on these two points : Is there more pain or pleasure in 
the world ? Is man good or evil ? The answer would 
certainly be overwhelming. At any given moment the 
vast majority of human beings are not in pain ; they 
are even enjoying more or less of pleasure. In every 
community the good are more than the bad ; and even 
in the bad there is enough good to make us hesitate in 
classifying them. Instinctively we find a good even in 
evil, 

" hearing oftentimes 
The still sad music of humanity, 
Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue." 

Instinctively we anticipate that pleasure will follow 
pain ; instinctively we assume that moral evil is 
transitory and will result in final good. 

" All that is good shall be good, with, for evil, so 
much good more." It would be impossible to make 
humanity as a whole accept any other view. Pain is 
only the drawback to life which is in the main pleasure- 
able. Evil is only the shadow of a good which is 
essentially light. 

The idea of pain being the constant and general 
state of human life is morbid, the result of a hyper- 
sensitiveness, and a want of balance. Here is a wise 

264 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

judgement from a current book, " The Comments of 
Bagshot" 1 :— 

"A year later he was seriously ill of pneumonia, with various painful 
complications, and I find another note about his sensations a few weeks 
after his recovery : I am told (he says) that my sufferings were horrible 
to witness and the nurse dwells particularly on my struggles for breath. 
Of those I was completely unconscious, and I am not aware of having 
even suffered discomfort in breathing. Other things were temporarily 
painful, but the memory of them has so far faded from my mind that 
it is scarcely to be weighed against the recollection of one sunny hour. 
The idea of pain is constantly before us because a few people out of a 
vast number are always suffering from accidents and diseases which 
are described in newspapers or talked about by their friends. This 
produces the illusion that pain is a constant factor in everybody's life. 
It is, on the contrary, but a rare incident in the lives of the vast 
majority." 

That is the language of all sane and wholesome 
humanity. 

Reader, I beg you to ask yourself: How many of the 
days you have lived have been free from pain ? Or if 
you are one of the very few who have pain as a frequent, 
nay, constant companion, have you not found a com- 
pensation in it, the moral growth which it has brought 
you, or the joy in the sympathy and help of others ? On 
the whole, those who make much of pain as an argument 
against God are not they who suffer it ; they who suffer 
it will more frequently find in it an argument for Him, 
because it has driven them to Him and has opened up 
for them the fountains of consolation. 

Still, making all allowance for exaggeration or misin- 
terpretation, the Spectre of Pain is always with us, nor 
is it given to every one to recognise in it an Angel. 

1 p. 50, by J. A. Spender. 
265 



My Belief 

The question which it raises cannot be dismissed ; nay, 
it should be held steadily in the mind. Nature indis- 
criminately injures human beings by earthquakes, 
volcanic eruptions, lightning, accidents, and epidemics. 
Even the best of men suffer from excruciating disease. 
Helpless children suffer through the neglect or callous- 
ness of others. A lad of eleven the other day was 
setting off to work, and was taken ill. " I must go," 
he said. For the family depended on this child. In 
three days he was in his coffin. Pathetic boy martyr ! 
Has anything more heroic been done on battlefields or 
in the gleaming lists of fame ? 

Nor is the anguish of heart or mind less than the 
suffering of the body. There are always women weeping 
and wringing their hands for those who will never come 
back to the shore. There are the vast households of 
orphans. There are lovers separated by death : 

" No later light has lightened up my heaven, 
No second morn has ever shone for me ; 
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given, 
All my life s bliss is in the grave with thee." 

There are the dull aching pains of anxiety for those 
we love. There is the numbing anguish caused by 
their treachery or misconduct ; the ear listening for 
the unsteady step of a husband or father, the shame 
and torture when disgrace has fallen on the home. 
Always the prudent and thrifty are suffering for the 
extravagance and self-indulgence of others. Every- 
where is a poison in human life, distilled from venomous 
tongues, uncharitable judgments and subtle slanders. 

When we are suffering, or when we are dwelling on 

266 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

the sufferings of others, it is possible, surely it is venial, 
to regard the Spectre of Pain as a malignant being, that 
with a brutal or insane callousness puts nerve and brain 
on the rack, till humanity tosses on a bed of anguish 
crying in the morning, Would God it were even ! and 
in the evening, Would God it were day ! 

' ' As troubled seas 

That surging beat the shore, 
We throb and heave 
Ever and evermore. ' ' 

And this glimpse at human pain leads us insensibly 
to the darker problem of human sin. Though we 
maintain the view that good preponderates over evil, 
evil is vast, terrible enough. Though we call the 
darkness only the shadow or the privation of life, 
darkness it is "black as the pit from pole to pole." 
The attempt to minimise sin by giving it other names 
is not in the long run successful. It is only made by 
the shallow, and appeals to the shallow. If their souls 
deepen, the whole argument seems to be a mockery. 

Men are selfish and cruel to one another. They 
cheat and lie and steal. They quarrel and fight and 
hate. The strong oppress the weak. The sensual 
ruin the innocent. Some years ago there was a theatre 
in London, at which, as was admitted in theatrical 
circles, the girls empk^ed had no chance of success 
unless they yielded to the amatory advances of the 
management. Men ruin women and trample them in 
the mire ; the ruined women retaliate by tempting other 
men. Men ill-use and beat the wives whom they have 
sworn to love. Women blacken each other's character, 

267 



My Belief 

and torture even their own children. In many work- 
shops the blasphemy and obscenity are such that a pure 
man lives in torture. In many counting-houses, colleges, 
or other resorts of young men, the talk and the practices 
blacken and defile the innocent lives that are brought 
into the corrupt society. There is no special advantage 
in giving mild names to this bestial, selfish, blasphemous, 
Godless element of human life. There is a fibrous 
growth of positive sin all through human society. 

" Oh, the offence is rank : it smells to heaven." 

Granting then that pain and sorrow and sin are a 
constant, though not a preponderant, ingredient of 
human life, and frankly recognising that the mystery 
of it is not explained, and may indeed be intentionally 
inexplicable while we remain in the present state of 
probation, we see that the business of a man in this 
world is to do what lies in his power to mitigate, lessen, 
or render more tolerable, the sorrow and the pain, and 
to vanquish and abolish the sin. 

But if we ask, what is there in the world which can 
shed any light on the problem, do anything to mitigate 
the evil, or hold out any prospect of its ultimate aboli- 
tion, we suddenly realise that the Christian religion is 
the one factor of human life which offers any hope of 
relief and deliverance. It came into the world to bring 
this hope, it has worked by the hope, it has shown that 
by hope we are saved. Christianity might even be 
defined as " the best explanation, the most effectual 
alleviation, and the one promise of the complete 
destruction, of sorrow and pain and sin." 

268 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

Amiel once described the religion of Christ as " a ray 
of divine light traversing human life." The description 
is just and offers a deserved rebuke to those self-confident 
dogmatists, the Gnostics whether Catholic or Protestant, 
who speak as if the light had abolished the darkness, 
answered all the questions and solved all the problems. 
No, the mystery hangs over things ; we know but little ; 
we push our knowledge in any direction, only to find 
behind it a vast unknown. If anyone volunteered to 
explain the mystery, and to show the reason of pain, 
sorrow and sin, fully and completely, we should regard 
him as insane. For this one point seems proved, after 
the futile search of several millenniums, that human 
existence is deliberately involved in unfathomable 
mystery, which can never be solved in this world. Per- 
haps even the purpose of the mystery is to keep the 
mind of man constantly expectant of the life beyond. 
& Here we see through a glass darkly, but there face to 
face — there shall we know even as we are known." 

But in this life of shadowy mystery by far the 
clearest and most lasting ray of light is the Gospel of 
Christ. It was called the good news because it brought 
light. Christ unhesitatingly presented himself as the 
Light of the World. 

Let us review in a few sentences the nature of the 
explanation, relief, or solace, which Christ brought to 
human suffering and pain, and the way in which Christ 
dealt with human sin. Each fresh effort of realisation 
brings out more clearly that Christ's object was to 
overthrow this dominion of evil, which we are bound 
to recognise in the world. 

269 



My Belief 

In the matter of suffering and pain, so far as that is 
physical, Christ came as a Healer. For some generations 
after his departure, as Harnack has shown, 1 the healing 
work of Jesus was continued in the Church, and it was 
one great cause of the expansion of Christianity. The 
remarkable spread of " Christian Science " is due to the 
rediscovery of this practical side of Christian truth. 
" Himself bore our infirmities," says the evangelist after 
describing a course of marvellous cures, and the quota- 
tion from the prophet is the one on which we rely to 
show that He bore our sins. He bore our sins by dying 
for them, but He bore our diseases while He lived, by heal- 
ing them. As the Church is called on to administer the 
pardon of sins, so it is her duty to administer the heal- 
ing of disease. Both powers are stored in the Person 
and work of Christ. So far as the ministry of Christ is 
genuine it will be the reproduction of Christ Himself, 
" who healeth all our diseases, and pardoneth all our 
iniquities." 

Christian medicine and surgery have done much to 
mitigate and prevent human pain. But the science 
and art of healing have in modern Europe become too 
divorced from the spiritual method of Christianity, 
to fulfil in any adequate sense the Christian mission 
of healing. It is time that we should recur to apostolic 
methods, and heal disease through Christ, by faith and 
prayer. 

But apart from the healing of disease, Christ 
mitigated all human pain by suffering the extremity of 
it himself. We are able to bear acute anguish by 

1 " Expansion of Christianity," vol. i., 122, 149, 167. 
270 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

turning our thought to the sufferings of Christ. For 
nineteen centuries Christians have been patient in 
suffering, and have quieted their hearts, by remember- 
ing : " this is nothing to what Christ bore for me." 

And further the example of Christ suffering has given 
a spiritual meaning to pain. If Christ was made perfect 
through suffering, we may be very ready to fill up the 
measure of His sufferings, on the way to His perfection. 

It will be found in all genuinely Christian circles 
and Christian hearts, that pain is transfigured. There 
is no doubt that the suffering is working peaceable 
fruits of righteousness to those who are exercised 
thereby. Christians 

" Reach a hand through time to grasp 
The far-off interest of tears. " 

So far, then, as the world is truly Christian, pain 
is overcome, that is to say, it is either relieved and 
abolished, or it is interpreted in such a way as to be a 
means of spiritual growth and blessing. If all people 
were truly Christian, the problem of pain, so far as 
humanity is concerned, would be solved. The vast 
proportion of diseases would be healed; the suffering 
which remains would be heartily and thankfully 
accepted as the means of accomplishing great results. 
As the lifeboat man faces the yeasty surges, or as the 
fireman enters the flaming rooms, all men would 
approach heroically inevitable pain, persuaded, through 
Christ, that their purpose is redemptive. 

But turning to the problem of sin, we are bound to 
confess that the object of Christianity is to deal with it 
by destroying it. The name Jesus was interpreted as 

271 



My Belief 

" He would save His people from their sins." The 
purpose has been confused by ecclesiastical dogma. 
Rome has completely obscured Christianity in this 
respect. She has led men to think that Christianity 
only proposes to save men from the punishment of 
their sins, and not from the sins themselves. The 
Roman method is to save men not from, but in, their 
sins. So far from holding out any hope of salvation in 
the Christian sense here and now, it preaches a 
purgatorial cleansing, to be prolonged through 
centuries in the after-life, before salvation can be 
claimed. 

But every student of the New Testament knows that 
this is the negation of the Christian Gospel. The 
sacrifice of Christ on the Cross offered to every believer 
the forgiveness of sins past, and the renewal of the 
soul, resulting in a perpetual victory over sin. As sin 
is condemned and overcome by the offering of Christ 
once for all, the Christian who heartily believes this 
enters into a victory already attained. He is a new 
creature in Christ, and he proceeds to live the life in 
which sin no longer has dominion over him. 

It is this concrete change of heart and character, this 
actual deliverance from sin in life and conduct, which 
is the gift of God to men in Christ Jesus. Nothing 
short of a heart in which sin is subdued is the gift 
which is given in Christ to the prayer, " Create in me 
a clean heart, O God." 

It is the complete ignorance and denial of this truth 
in the Roman Church, which renders that Church at 
once so attractive to sinful men who desire to continue 

272 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

in sin, and so destructive of Christianity, the whole 
object of which is to deliver men from their sins. 

Dr. Griffith John 1 says that some of the Chinese 
converts " seem to clear the chasm which yawns 
between the old and the new life in one bound, and 
become at once new men in Christ." Such was Yii Ki- 
fang, who was sixty years of age at the time of his conver- 
sion. " His whole being was influenced by the truth 
from the beginning, and his entire character was 
ennobled and purified. His life seemed to me to be as 
spotless as that of any Christian I have ever met with, 
whether in China or out of China." It was his meat 
and drink to do Christ's work. When death approached 
he was radiant and triumphant. " My sins are great," 
he said, " but I have a great Saviour. I die embracing 
the Cross." 

This is what Christ does, wherever He is truly 
preached and simply believed. He came, as He said, 
to destroy the works of the devil. He could say, " Be 
of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." 

All the torments and sufferings which result from sin 
— and we only hinted at them in the most sketchy way 
just now — are overcome by the removal of sin, and by 
that only. When men and women are new creatures 
in Christ, they love one another, they help and bless 
each other, they are helpers of each other's joy. A 
community composed of men like Yii Ki-fang, or that 
Pastor Hsi, of whom Miss Geraldine Guinness has told 
the matchless story, would be happy in life, trustful 
in death, progressive in this world, hopeful of eternal 

1 " A Voice from China," p. 207. 

273 S 



My Belief 

progress hereafter. And this is the work of Christ's 
Gospel; it has produced and it produces those in whom 
sin is vanquished, those therefore who are in the world 
as salt that saves it from corruption, and even, like their 
Master, as the light of the world. 

It is, of course, a misfortune that the vast number 
of merely nominal and professional Christians, who are 
strangers to the saving work of Christ, eclipses the 
Christian truth. But the truth is there : " the ray of 
divine light traversing human life " produces men and 
women who are pure and true, full of love and self- 
sacrificing service. They are always warring against 
and subduing sin. They are the unfailing witnesses to 
the sinlessness of that future life, which they will, and 
all might, enter at death. 

Thus Christianity, if not, in its evidences or its mani- 
fest effects, all that we should be inclined to demand, 
is in its practical working by far the most complete 
and effectual solace, mitigation and remedy of human 
pain and disease, and the only tested power of van- 
quishing human sin, with which we are acquainted. 
To reject Christ, therefore, as some humanitarians 
seem to do, on the ground that evil is incompatible 
with a belief in God as love, is surely a most illogical 
and misguided course. By so doing you do not in the 
least mitigate the evil, you only dismiss the one power 
which can overcome it. The more intensely we feel 
the sorrow and sin of the world, the more earnestly and 
consistently we shall avail ourselves of the one remedy. 
The more painfully we recognise the darkness, the more 
diligently we shall abide in the traversing ray of light. 

274 



The Problem of Suffering and Sin 

There has been one other attempt to explain and 
defeat the evil of the world, which, in point of the width 
of its influence, challenges comparison with Christianity. 
That is Buddhism. It has been fitly described as the 
Light of Asia. But the more searching the comparison 
instituted between the two religions, the more convinced 
does the student become in calling Christianity the 
Light of the World. 

For, howdim is the light of Asia! Practically how dark 
and unrelieved is the misery of the millions who know 
only Buddha, and not Christ! Hard and cruel is the 
human heart in China and Japan, notwithstanding the 
ubiquitous figure of Buddha ! And how could it be other- 
wise ? The impassive image, always seated, gazing 
with blank eyes, not at man or at God, but only within, 
offers small comfort to human sorrow or sin. Buddha 
set out to save the world, but ended in only saving 
himself, and only doing that by finding the loss of con- 
sciousness in Nirvana. This is essentially the doctrine 
of Schopenhauer: pessimism. The one cure of life's 
misery and sin is to escape from being. 

Christ set out to save the world by sacrificing 
Himself, by seeking not His own, and He opened 
the kingdom of heaven to all believers. He did not 
come like Buddha, to rid men of life, but that they 
might have life and have it more abundantly. Thus 
Christ has the promise of the future, a promise of the 
life which now is, and also of that which is to come. The 
wise man will, with Peter, say to Him : " Lord, to 
whom shall we go ? for thou hast the words of eternal 
life." 

275 s 2 



XVI 
ATONEMENT 

The doctrines of atonement which have had vogue 
in the Church have not been able to satisfy the growing 
intelligence of faith. Thus it has frequently happened 
that, while the truth of Christ's atoning Cross has 
always been held as central, the explanation of it in 
one age has been the most serious obstacle to accepting 
it in the next. Mr. Campbell, in his trenchant and 
fearless way, has poured ridicule on the doctrine of 
Atonement which prevailed half a century ago, and 
found expression in many of our popular hymns. 
Preachers less trenchant and fearless hesitate to handle 
roughly the word which they first heard from the lips 
of saintly parents and preachers who are gone, and 
seek, by presenting a positive doctrine of the Atone- 
ment, to win men imperceptibly from the crude and 
contradictory ideas of the past. 

But Mr. Campbell's method, as iconoclasm generally, 
is justified, if souls are kept from Christ and from 
reconciliation with God by a partial or an illogical or 
an immoral statement of the truth. If the ground is 
cumbered by dead roots, it may be necessary to blast 
them out before a crop can be sown. 

For my own part, I would rather try to present the 
Atonement positively, and to commend it to every 

276 



Atonement 

man's conscience in the sight of God, than engage in a 
refutation of decayed dogmas. After all, these false 
and limited doctrines do eventually die. Probably no 
one in Christendom now accepts the idea, which yet 
held an undisputed authority in the Church for a 
thousand years, that Christ was offered as a ransom 
to the devil, to buy off the souls which were justly in 
his power through sin, with the grotesque addition that 
God tricked the devil, because when he had accepted 
the death of Christ as a bait, he found that he could 
not permanently keep Him. 

To the orthodoxy of to-day this orthodoxy of the 
pre-Anselmic period probably sounds not only immoral, 
but ridiculous. 

Even Anselm's view has ceased to command the 
assent of the modern world, and the other speculations, 
Macleod Campbell's, Dale's, Moberly's, Scott Lidgett's, 
have never taken captive the Church as a whole. They 
rise and fall. What is crude and false eventually 
disappears. 

I will not, therefore, spend any time in reviewing or 
criticising the theories of Atonement. I will only make 
two or three preliminary statements to clear the ground. 

(i) God did not punish the Innocent in place of the 
guilty, and does not forgive the guilty because He has 
punished the Innocent. 

Such an idea is immoral, and is unjustified by 
scripture or conscience. 

(2) There is no Atonement so objective that it works 
as a means of salvation, apart from the faith and the 
moral regeneration of the sinner. 

277 



My Belief 

Antinomianism is utterly repugnant to all Biblical 
theology. 

(3) There is no schism between God the Father and 
the Son. The Son does not interpose between God's 
wrath and man. On the contrary, the saving trans- 
action originated in God Himself. " Herein is love, 
not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent 
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 

These are the irrefragable canons of Scripture, reason 
and conscience, which no doctrine of Atonement 
must violate; because doctrines of Atonement have 
violated one or another of them, they have become 
untenable, injurious, a hindrance to faith. More and 
more the trained moral sense rejects the dogma that 
God would excuse the sinner from punishment, because 
that punishment is inflicted on Jesus. There is no 
moral grip in such a theory ; it attempts to save us by 
an assertion which is essentially opposed to the ethical 
sense; the salvation produced by it cannot, therefore, 
be ethical. A father, accepting such a theory, and 
knowing that he is to be an imitator of God, would 
attempt to reform an offending child, by inflicting the 
punishment on the good child. That would be revolt- 
ing to child and father and everyone else. It is an 
impiety to attribute to the Heavenly Father what we 
should count it an incivility to attribute to our fellow- 
men. 

More and more the ethical sense of the Church 
demands that Atonement should not be such as encou- 
rages us to continue in sin. Antinomianism is no 
longer tolerable, whether it clothes itself in Calvinistic 

278 



Atonement 

or Arminian dress. So far as the doctrine of Atone- 
ment has sanctioned it or given excuse for it, we all 
to-day unhesitatingly pronounce that doctrine untrue. 

Still more does the best theology of our time, whether 
it be the reasoned theology of the schools or the 
instinctive practical theology of Church and home and 
mart, revolt against that libel on God, which represents 
Christ as intervening to save us from His wrath. The 
God who has so been presented ceases to be an object 
of love. A swift Nemesis comes to those who entertain 
the libel. Catholicism holding that Christ saved us 
from God, and teaching that Christ is God, soon 
required someone to save us from Christ. Mary and 
the saints intercede for man with the Divine Judge — 
for such in Catholicism the Saviour becomes. If God 
is righteousness and Christ is mercy, before long both 
mercy and righteousness disappear from the Godhead, 
and man's hope rests again in weak creatures of his 
own kind, who at least may pity if they cannot save 
their fellows. 

We are not then attempting to criticise old theories, 
nor to suggest another of our own. We shall not even 
try to present the orthodox doctrine of the day in any 
exhaustive fashion. But recognising and avoiding the 
errors which have made the Atonement incredible and 
repulsive, we will try to look afresh, and with modern 
eyes, at the facts presented in the New Testament, and 
see if the Atonement, as it appears there, is not as 
conformable to our conscience, our moral sense, as it is 
obviously necessary and essential to our salvation. 
The point at which the problem can be most easily 

279 



My Belief 



approached is this: If God is a pardoning God, 
delighting to have mercy, longing to forgive sinful 
men, what is it that stands in the way of that free 
forgiveness to which His love prompts Him ? Ob- 
viously the difficulty is, that a free forgiveness makes 
light of sin. Sin appears a mere fault or infirmity 
which mercy can overlook. But if sin is so 
slighted, the sorrow for it decreases, the desire to 
escape it is lessened, the authority for pardon dis- 
appears ; and one who is not sorry for sin, does not 
desire to escape from it, and will not seek pardon, 
cannot be forgiven. In this way a free forgiveness may 
prevent men from being forgiven. 

That this result is not imaginary, is seen in the 
Koran, and in Mohammedanism as a working religion. 
In the Koran God is "the most merciful of those who 
show mercy." Such is His mercy, that the Moslem is 
persuaded he will not visit on him his iniquities. 
Relying, therefore, on the mercy of God, he continues 
in sin. A Mohammedan society is honeycombed with 
moral corruption; a stable and just government becomes 
impossible. And this results from the idea of God as 
merciful, who by forgiving sin makes light of it. 

Something of the same kind is manifest in the 
modern world, where the decay of Christian faith has 
led to the slighting of sin. Nowhere is sin so prevalent 
and so disastrous as in men who deny it, and profess 
that they do not feel it. The absence of a sense of sin is 
invariably a gauge of the extent and destructiveness of 
sin. On the other hand, the sense of sin, the revolt from 
it, the hatred of it, are the steps to the deliverance 

280 



Atonement 

from it. And, paradoxical as it may seem, they who 
are most delivered from it are most conscious of it, 
while they who are most in bondage to it, are most 
incredulous of it. 

" Till life is coming back, our death we do not feel. 
Light must be entering in our darkness to reveal." 

It would seem, then, that forgiveness of sin can only be 
real and efficacious if it is accompanied by the un- 
equivocal condemnation of sin, so that the forgiveness 
deepens the sense of sin, excites the desire to escape 
from it, and plants in the mind a fixed abhorrence 
of it. 

Now let the reader, remembering the conditions under 
which we live, viz., the invisibility of God, and the diffi- 
culty of learning and conceiving His will, ask himself, 
how in this sphere of human life, in the plane of our 
present experience, God was to make clear to men that 
He condemned sin absolutely and unequivocally, and 
yet that He would freely forgive it ; that He would and 
righteously could forgive it, because it was so absolutely 
and unequivocally condemned. 

The necessity that sin must be condemned in being 
forgiven will become perfectly plain on reflection. The 
conclusion is inevitable. But how sin can be forgiven 
and condemned by God, how it can be recognised as 
exceeding sinful and yet forgiven, how it can be for- 
given and yet absolutely and unequivocally condemned, 
will be found a problem which passes the wit of man. 

We can think of sins recognised as evil, condemned, and 
punished, and then remitted because they are adequately 

281 



My Belief 

punished. That indeed is the usual course of dealing 
with the problem in human affairs. 

We can also think of a free forgiveness which opens 
all prisons, remits all debts and sacrifices. That is a 
course from which we instinctively shrink, because we 
cannot conceive such a forgiveness as producing any- 
thing but an aggravation of crimes, debts and offences 
of all kinds. 

But at once to forgive and to condemn, to pass sentence 
upon sin and yet to pardon, the mind cannot readily, 
nor even by any effort, reach a solution of this problem. 

Now the solution presented in the Gospel, the fact 
which justifies the title of "good news," is one which only 
escapes our wonder, and acceptance, and gratitude, 
because it is so essentially unlike any human thought 
or device. It bears the Divine stamp, because it could 
never have entered the heart of man. Now, according 
to the Gospel, the Divine solution was this : God sent 
His Son into the world, to live a human life. Genuinely 
free, He grew up among men from infancy to manhood 
in a thoroughly human way. As a boy He was bent on 
doing His Father's will. With His maturity of mind 
and body came the call of His life. He recognised — as 
the Gospel narratives enable us to see — His mission. 
The question was, Would He voluntarily face a death 
which would be the condemnation of human sin ? 
Would He be made sin for man ? Would He hang on 
the cross, and receive in Himself the shame, the guilt, 
the suffering of sin, so that for ever sin would stand 
condemned in the flesh ? He faced the problem ; with 
unveiled eyes He saw what it involved. The cup which 

282 



Atonement 

was given to Him He drank. He recognised that it 
was the Father's will, that His life and death were the 
appointment of the Father's love to men, that sin 
might be condemned in the flesh. Deliberately and 
triumphantly He fulfilled His mission, and said " It is 
finished." 

What the condemnation of sin in each sinful soul 
would mean becomes evident : it would mean death. 
If sin were to be condemned in that way all would die. 
The condemnation of sin would be found only in the 
death of all, and forgiveness would be meaningless. 

But the voluntary, conscious and deliberate self- 
offering of Jesus to bear the condemnation of sin for 
men, was a complete condemnation of sin in the flesh. 
In the light of that fact, a fact initiated, approved and 
accepted by God Himself, no one could think that He 
condoned sin. No one could make light of sin. It was 
deicide, because it slew Jesus. 

But sin thus openly and absolutely condemned once 
for all, God could freely forgive sinners who believed 
in Jesus. If they believed in Him, they would not 
make light of sin. Forgiveness coming in that way 
would condemn sin in Him, and commit them to 
renounce it, to hate it, to avoid it. Thus free forgive- 
ness through the Cross would be the overcoming and 
destruction of sin, and would lead to a life free from 
it. The love of God, which would save by forgiving, 
found in this way the means of fulfilling the beneficent 
purpose. 

It will be seen then how Christ is the propitiation for 
our sins, and how God sent Him to be the propitiation. 

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My Belief 

He was the voluntary and sacrificing sin-offering, who 
once and for all, in the Eternal Spirit, received the 
condemnation of sin in Himself, in order that men 
might be freely forgiven. He was so at one with God, 
that the act was essentially God's own. The crisis of 
the suffering which produced the cry : " My God ! My 
God ! why hast thou forsaken me ? " was the necessary 
spasm of receiving into Himself the condemnation of 
sin. But the parting from God, thus voluntarily 
incurred, was a suffering to God no less than to 
Christ. 

When an Italian mother gave her sons to die for the 
redemption of Italy, her suffering was equal to that of 
the soldiers who fell. It could not but be so. When 
God gave His only-begotten Son to hang on the Cross 
and suffer, at the hands of sinful men, the anguish and 
the death which were the condemnation of sin, God 
suffered with Him. Only by that anguish taken into 
the Divine heart, could sin be condemned. Only if sin 
could be so condemned could men truly be forgiven. 

But, so mistaken has been the doctrine of propitiation 
taught in the Church, that the very word creates a 
sense of uneasiness, or even of dislike in many minds. 
"I forgive my enemy," says one, " without propitiation : 
why should not God forgive me in the same way ? " 
Or " I forgive my children without any expiation ; 
surely the Heavenly Father could forgive us as readily 
as I forgive my children." But in the light of what has 
been said, we may venture to ask : Do you really 
forgive your enemy without propitiation ? Must he 
not recognise and acknowledge his offence, express his 

284 



Atonement 

regret, and his wish to be reconciled to you, as well as 

his resolution not to repeat the offence ? This is 

of course, as between man and man, equally fallible and 

faulty, all the propitiation that is necessary ; but it is a 

propitiation. And if you forgive your enemy without 

that necessary propitiation, what good effect will it 

have upon him ? If he remains convinced that he is 

in the right, and you are in the wrong, if he cherishes 

the same resentment and intends to act in the same 

way again, your forgiveness is nullified. He rejects it 

and flouts it. That is to say, there is strictly speaking 

no forgiveness at all. And so with your child ; you do 

not forgive him without expiation. If you are a wise 

parent, you punish his fault with the utmost exactitude. 

Only when he sees that it was wrong, is obviously sorry, 

and promises not to do it again, do you forgive him. 

If you are foolish enough to forgive without this 

kind of expiation, you are certainly heading your child 

towards moral disaster. 

But, if it be said, Why then cannot God forgive us, 
on the expression of our repentance and sorrow and 
resolution to amend ? we must remember that the case 
between man and God is necessarily different from that 
between man and man. Men are equally faulty ; they 
cannot sit in judgement on one another. Even a 
father cannot exact anything from his children on the 
ground of his superior goodness ; his heart sickens 
within him as he recognises that his children's sins 
have been in him before. 

But between man and God it is otherwise. The 
debt is due to God. He is the inflexible holiness, 

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My Belief 

which cannot endure iniquity. That holiness is the 
throne and pillar of the universe. It must assert itself 
even in the act of forgiving. To forgive in such a way 
as to derogate from that holiness, to depreciate or 
infringe it, would be a disaster indeed to that moral 
order which is the essential principle, the one hope, of 
the world. The propitiation, therefore, between man 
and God must be, not only, as between man and 
man, repentance and the purpose to amend, but the 
recognition of the absolute and transcendent holiness 
of God. And that propitiation as we have seen could 
only have been made by the sinless Son voluntarily 
taking upon Himself the condemnation of human 
sin. 

And perhaps it should be added that, as between man 
and the invisible and the unknown God, there is the 
greatest difficulty in producing any real repentance, 
contrition or resolution to amend. It was the mani- 
festation of Jesus, as the Son of God bearing the sins of 
the world, which first worked in men that genuine 
sorrow for sin and longing to be rid of it which, 
according to the view of the objector, should be the 
sufficient propitiation for God. No, even that propitia- 
tion, such as occurs frequently between man and 
man, was not possible between man and God until 
it was wrought in man by the good news that God 
has sent forth His Son to be a propitiation for our 
sins. 

We are not then indulging in an idle dogmatism, but 
we are stating a fact of reason and experience, when 
we say that only through the Cross of Christ can men 

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Atonement 

be really forgiven. Apart from that, they may have a 
theory of Divine forgiveness, they may maintain that 
God ought to forgive, or will forgive, but they cannot 
be actually forgiven, because without the Cross of 
Christ there is nothing which offers at once the con- 
demnation of sin and its forgiveness, the forgiveness 
based on the condemnation, and unless sin is con- 
demned as it is forgiven it is never realised as sin 
and therefore never really forgiven. If anyone objects 
to this as a narrow and exclusive doctrine, I am con- 
tent to put to him the question : " Are you forgiven ? " 
And, if he says " Yes," I shall venture to ask, " What 
objective ground have you for believing that you are ? " 
Certainly he will be unable to mention any. But in 
that case, his forgiveness is purely subjective ; that is, 
he is not forgiven by God, he only forgives himself ; 
which is indeed a collapsible position. 

No, there is no other name given among men 
whereby they may be saved. There is no solid, objec- 
tive, and satisfying ground of Divine forgiveness except 
the Cross of Christ. 

But, on the other hand, while men can only be for- 
given by the Cross, by the Cross all men can be forgiven. 
The self-offering of the Son of God for men is a fact of 
eternity, transacted in time. As the sufficient condem- 
nation of sin is the free gift of God's forgiveness, it 
avails for all, just as the sun avails to light the whole 
earth, or the air avails to give all creatures breath. 
Whoever believes it can at once receive the pardon of 
God, and be reconciled to Him. The word of the 
Cross is sufficient for all men now living, and for all 

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My Belief 



who will live. If the 1,500,000,000 of the human race 
believed to-day in the truth of the Cross, in God's con- 
demnation of all sin, and free forgiveness of it, the 
whole race would be born again, the kingdom of God 
would have come. 

To bring all men to see and accept this truth is the 
object of all Christian preaching and of Christian 
missions. The truth is self-expansive, because directly 
a man believes in it and experiences its effect, he cannot 
but wish to communicate the good news to every crea- 
ture. There is an extraordinary simplicity in the Chris- 
tian Gospel, because it consists of one single piece of 
intelligence, viz., that God is in Christ reconciling the 
world to Himself, because Christ voluntarily suffered 
the condemnation of sin, and therefore God can and 
does forgive everyone who believes in Him. But this 
simplicity of the Gospel includes everything. Out of it 
comes the true morality ; from the true morality comes 
the right ordering of society ; also from the true 
morality comes the comity of nations, the brother- 
hood of man, the peace of the world. Out of it 
again comes life eternal and the consummation of 
human and earthly things in a divine and heavenly 
order. If we start from the Cross, we shall reach the 
Crown. 

This book has not been an attempt to state a Chris- 
tian Theology ; for such a task we should start from the 
point which we have now reached. Our object has 
been rather to meet the difficulties and remove the 
obstacles, which prevent the people of our time from 
coming to the Cross. But, as we close, we may in a 

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Atonement 

few general outlines show the light which radiates from 
the Cross, and the way in which the preaching of 
the Cross has to some extent already been, and must 
eventually to the full extent be, the salvation of man- 
kind, the regeneration of the world. 

When anyone receives forgiveness through the Cross, 
there are two things which immediately follow : (i) being 
saved by grace, he renounces the deadening idea of 
being saved by merit ; (2) forgiven only by the con- 
demnation of sin, he is committed to quit sin ; the 
Cross which saves him crucifies sin in him, and him 
to sin ; crucifies him to the world and the world 
to him. 

Needless to say there is much nominal Christianity 
which does not show these results ; but that is because 
forgiveness is either not received at all, or not received 
through the Cross, which is indeed much the same as 
not being received at all. But we will confine ourselves 
to the truth of the Gospel, and not turn aside to examine 
the misstatements or perversions of it. 

Forgiven through the Cross we accept pardon and 
reconciliation with God as a free and wholly unmerited 
gift ; we know it is not by works of righteousness that 
we have done, but by the grace of God bringing salva- 
tion to all, that we are saved. This is of priceless 
value, from an ethical point of view. For if we are 
saved, even in the remotest degree, by our merit, we 
cannot but have that measure of self-complacency and 
sense of virtue. Such complacency and sense of 
virtue is the worst of vices, the most deadening of 
human sins. But saved by the sheer grace of God, 

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My Belief 



forgiven simply because His sinless Son bore the con- 
demnation of our sin, we are necessarily humbled, we 
can think nothing of ourselves. Our attention is 
directed exclusively to the righteousness of Him who 
died for us. Self is repulsive ; we wish to see it cruci- 
fied ; we dwell only on the goodness of God in seeking 
and in forgiving us, and on the goodness of Christ, 
through which the Divine purpose of love was carried 
out. Thus in a manner Self, the egoism which is the 
root of all human misery and sin, is nailed to Christ's 
cross, is dead and buried. What rises from the tomb 
with Christ is a new creature altogether, an activity 
which is exercised entirely in the lines of Christ's life 
and character. The new man in Christ Jesus is a very 
specific phenomenon. It would be highly convenient if 
the term Christian were confined to those who are thus 
renewed. In the New Testament they are called saints. 
But that term is defiled with all ignoble use ; it stands 
now only for sanctimoniousness, for a harsh asceticism, 
or for a sense of superiority to the sinful world. Prac- 
tically the saint of to-day is the Pharisee of the New 
Testament. We cannot dream of reviving the dis- 
honoured term. Neither can we without affectation 
confine the very general name, Christian, which is 
applied to the whole body of men who are brought 
up in a knowledge of the Christian religion, to the 
limited number who have the specific Christian experi- 
ence. We are at a loss for a name. " The redeemed " 
would serve us well; but custom has attributed that 
title to those who have passed into the heavenly 
world. 

290 



Atonement 

We must be content to use a periphrasis, and speak 
of those who are forgiven through the Cross of Christ. 
These persons, under a great variety of church forms, 
and not infrequently apart from church forms alto- 
gether, are in the world as a saving influence, the one 
decisive element of hope, and means of cleansing. 
They leaven society. So far as there is any true and pure 
church in the world, as distinct from mere formalism 
and tyranny of church-organisation, it is due to 
them. These, it will invariably be found, are at the 
root of all social and political regeneration. These and 
these alone make for peace and international amity. 
On the growth of their number rests the hope of the 
world. As the Cross was in the midst of the world to 
be the means of the world's salvation, they who believe 
and are saved by it are the agents of its working in the 
world. The Cross breaks down the middle wall of par- 
tition, and it draws together in one the ransomed 
human family. 

Churches and sects divide mankind. The Cross is 
only unitive. For though it seems to divide men into 
those who believe in it and are saved, and those who 
do not, it is not really so, because all who believe in it 
and are saved, are impelled by the love it creates in 
them to seek the salvation of the rest. Churches and 
sects produce an antagonism, even persecution, to those 
who are without. The Cross has the opposite effect ; 
it makes men reach wide arms of love towards those 
who are without, to draw them in. 

The theology of the Cross presents a God, who is 
holy love, love which will save all, but love which 

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My Belief 

means by saving, making men holy like itself. This 
God is at once above men and in them — above as 
their maker, as their sovereign, as their goal and 
exceeding great reward ; in them, as a spirit of 
yearning which can never rest except in Him, which 
can never accept the separation of sin as final, which 
desires purity, because that is the one way of seeing 
God. 

The theology of the Cross, painting sin in its true 
colours and delivering men from it, is the guarantee of 
moral progress here, and the promise of sinlessness 
hereafter. This world should be sinless ; the world to 
come shall be. That is the inference of the Cross. 
Thus all who accept this truth are engaged in a lifelong 
struggle to subdue sin, and are supported by an inde- 
structible hope of the world into which sin can by no 
means enter. 

The theology of the Cross is sometimes supposed to 
have invented the grim images of Satan, and Hell and 
eternal torture. But indeed that is as if we were to 
charge the lifeboat with causing the wreck. Satan and 
Hell and eternal torture are the inevitable forms in 
which the experience of sin clothes itself. How far 
they represent objective realities, or how far they are 
simply the images of the sinful soul, the theology of 
the Cross does not attempt to determine. But taking 
those sorrowful and tormenting realities, which you 
visualise as Satan, Hell, and eternal torture, the Cross 
comes to deliver you from them. Satan is vanquished 
in the Cross, Hell is abolished, eternal torture becomes 
eternal life. 

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Atonement 

If the thought of to-day expresses the soul's inward 
unrest in other terms, such terms for example as Ibsen 
employs in his realistic pictures of life, the horrors of 
heredity, the eccentricities of hypocrisy, of lust, of 
greed, — no one will question that the human facts in 
Ibsen are more realistic and more appalling than the 
old names of Satan, Hell and eternal torment, — the 
theology of the Cross comes as an equal deliverance 
from the evil so expressed, a deliverance from the 
torment of self, from the entail of heredity, from 
the tyranny of habit, from the pride, the loveless- 
ness, the cynicism which light the fires of the earthly 
hell. 

The theology of the Cross detaches itself from both 
Romanism and Protestantism as such. Once these 
systems were its instruments. But so far as they have 
ceased to be so, it sits in judgment on them, and 
dismisses them. The ecclesiastical strife is on the 
surface, and attracts attention for that reason. But 
there is an inward and spiritual struggle going on in 
the world, which it is harder to see and to depict ; 
it is the triumph of the Cross, the process by which 
at all times Christ is subduing all things unto Him- 
self. 

The theology of the Cross finally is the key to the 
Bible. If from the Bible one were to remove Christ 
crucified the whole book, as a book of God, and a 
charter of salvation, would fall to pieces. The Cross 
gone, one might very readily relegate the Bible to the 
general library of the religious books of the world; 
there would be little reason to regret the refutation of 

293 



My Belief 

its facts, or the depreciation of its doctrines. Apart 
from the Cross, the Bible is not a very clear or coherent 
direction of life, nor is it a very consistent picture of 
God. But with the Cross as the final cause of the 
Bible, the whole literature assumes coherence, purpose, 
articulation, vitality. The New Testament is the 
historic record of Christ crucified, what He was, what 
He did, and how He saved the world. The Old Testa- 
meat is the picture of the preparation for His coming 
and for His work. It assumes the character of a fore- 
cast, a prophecy, a typology. Its moral discipline, its 
legal ordinances, its ethical truths, and its ethical 
limitations, both what it achieved and what it failed to 
achieve, alike cast the reader on Christ and the Cross, 
the goal to which the whole book leads. 

Thus it will be seen that so far from explaining the 
Atonement away, our business rather is to find in it 
the explanation of everything. It was well said by 
Rothe that the theology of regeneration is the regenera- 
tion of theology. The all-reconciling truth of religion, 
and of humanity, and of God, is the truth of the 
reconciliation of man and God through the Cross of 
Christ. 

There are many who try to present Christianity 
without the Cross, and who believe that they can com- 
mend it to mankind, if only the offence of the Cross 
has ceased. They are suffering from a curious illusion. 
A Christianity without the Cross is not Christianity at 
all. It avoids, no doubt, the offence of the Cross, but 
it also misses the saving power. Such a Christianity 
can no doubt adapt itself to current philosophies, or to 

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Atonement 

popular standards of life and conduct; but it cannot 
correct the philosophies, improve the standards, or 
convert the souls of men. 

The theology of the Cross is the New Theology, 
which waits in its extent and far-reaching consequences 
to be tried. 



BRADBLRY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 



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